Columnist Benjamin Grove: Sniper is the winner on all fronts except one

Benjamin Grove

Friday, Oct. 18, 2002 | 6:05 a.m.

I AM A DENIZEN of the District. I live and work in the nation's capital, and I venture out of the city to the Maryland and Virginia suburbs maybe once a month.

It's usually not worth battling traffic. The District has just about everything residents could want, except: stadium-seating movie theaters, cheap grocery stores and a Home Depot.

For the nearest Home Depot, we have to go to the Seven Corners area in Falls Church, Va. My fiancee and I have been there lots of times for mulch and plants and paint.

But not since Monday, of course. Not with the sniper on the loose.

With much of the geography of the suburbs still a mystery to me, I have known only generally where the first 10 sniper shootings occurred. On Monday I knew exactly where he had struck.

"Hey, that's our Home Depot," Denise and I said nearly in unison as we heard the news break on the car radio Monday night. We were, as it turns out, on our way home from a foray into a Maryland suburb.

It was no surprise to us that lots of people had been at the Home Depot at 9:15 on a Monday night. That place is always packed. I frequently circle around the parking structure where 47-year-old Linda Franklin was killed with a single bullet. Denise and I have loaded ornamental brick into our car in roughly the same spot where Franklin fell.

The two of us rode home in silence.

My thoughts these days are often colored by the fact that I am getting married next month. I look at the world a little differently.

As the media focus an endless stream of coverage on the hunt for the killer, and sometimes on his victims, I wonder about their spouses.

In particular, I wonder about Ted, Franklin's husband, who was there when she was shot.

How do you recover from that?

I wonder about things like that. Of course, the sniper wants us to wonder about things like that. As much as we don't want to admit it here, the sniper is winning. He's gotten inside our heads.

People are afraid. They don't want to pump gas; sidewalk cafes have pulled outdoor seating; high school football games and homecoming dances and SAT tests and 5K runs have been canceled. We say we are going about the business of our daily lives, but we are making all kinds of adjustments. And there is a gnawing fear lurking in the back of our minds: "I know the chances of me being the next victim are almost nil. But that's probably what the sniper's first 11 victims thought, too."

So we do pump our gas, but we look over our shoulders.

And we all feel vulnerable by design. The sniper has chosen a diverse group of victims. By not terrorizing one group of people, he makes everyone fearful. He has a knack for striking people performing the most mundane tasks: unloading a shopping cart, vacuuming a car and walking into a school. He wants us to think, "Hey, that could have been me."

No doubt, the name of the sniper will long be etched into our memories if he is found.

Like serial killers before him, we'll probably learn all about the guy -- his background, how he eluded police, maybe even bizarre, unforgettable little details about what motivated his killing spree.

He'll become infamous.

And in that way, too, the sniper will have won.

Meanwhile history may forget the spouses of the victims. But they will emerge from grief to keep the memories of their husbands and wives alive.

The sniper has proved he can snuff out a life with a single bullet, but love is harder to extinguish.

In that way, the sniper has lost.