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Bang, You're Dead

Well known words, those, especially to natives of the Washington DC metropolitan area. What hasn't been said about this latest serial killer, who's struck down 10 random people so far, killing eight of them? This is a story which has sent waves of fear and loathing reverberating across the nation, and also a morbid curiosity. My concern isn't so much for the story itself, which others have better recounted than I could, no. Nor am interested in guessing at the racial, ethnic, religious, or political background of anyone or any group responsible. No...my concern is respect.
At first, I entertained a grim respect for the killer...although calling him a sniper is giving more credit than I think is due. A real sniper would be 10 for 10, popping heads each time... this killer is no expert marksman. As I've written elsewhere, I admire the way one man can sometimes make a difference. He may use a long-range rifle, but the true weapon the killer wields is fear. Make no mistake about that.
Then someone had to go and pop a 13 year old boy, one of the two survivors so far of this terror. I don't know why that offended me so deeply...maybe it was because I always believed (naively, in these days of total war) that children are noncombatants, that they should be exempt from the duties and horrors of war and random death. That shooting is atypical in the string of ten...and it gives me cause to wonder whether we are at the mercy of more than one sniper.
Then the whole affair with the Death Card unfolded. Death cards are nothing new...it brought to mind a scene from Apocalypse Now where Robert Duvall tosses several playing cards toward some dead Vietnamese. But the use of the Death card as a love note for the police filled me with disgust. Sure, every one with any interest in psychoanalysis pegged this killer as a person with a God complex a long time ago (it seems like so much longer than a week and a half). But to come out and say as much sealed the deal for me. I may have a healthy respect for the value of every living moment now, but for this coward, this cretin, I have none.
I wonder if that would be different if he had used something more arcane...like maybe the Hanged Man, or the deuce of clubs, or if he'd written something more interesting (anything would qualify). As it stands, what the card says to me is that mr. god wants to come down from on high and talk with his flock, so that we may honor him with kind words, and praise his deeds of death. I'm not alone in that opinion, and the police have tried to pursue that angle in their vain search for this coward. Like every other avenue of pursuit, this too has reached a dead end.
I have no more idea than the admirable Chief Moose how to catch this killer, or group of killers (the attack on the boy, and the business with the Death card make me question the unity of the agency involved). I've thought about trying to track him down myself, although common sense intervenes and stops me from willfully seeking death. My mother, in particular, advised me against that course of action as well, which she should. But even when this coward is brought to justice, the fear he's brought forth will be slower to pass away than the lives of his victims.