The Investigators: Charles Moose

For 22 days, an unknown force held the Washington area in its grip. The city and its suburbs were peppered with death - all from the barrel of an unseen gun.

And Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose was faced with cracking the biggest case of his 24-year career.

In his first prime-time interview, which originally aired last October - after suspects John Muhammed and Lee Malvo were arrested and charged with murder - the usually stone-faced police chief had lots of smiles when he told Correspondent Harold Dow about the toll those 22 days took on the area, the nation and himself.

"It was a mixed feeling," says Moose. "I maybe felt like I should almost apologize, because we're kind of late, and how do you tell the families that we didn't get this solved before you lost your loved one. But certainly it felt good because we can at least say that there's some family that's going to be together tonight because we got it done."

In the end, Chief Moose got it done in large part because of some help from the most unlikely of sources - the suspected killers themselves.

After wounding a 13-year-old boy at a school, the snipers started talking with a cryptic clue: a tarot card with a note that said, "I am God." It was the beginning of the end, a way to crack the case.

John Douglas, who headed the FBI's criminal profiling unit, could tell the snipers were playing cat and mouse with Chief Moose. But why would anyone who's getting away with murder leave clues?

"It happens often times," says Douglas. "It becomes a big joke for them. So they think the cops are like the Pinkerton police.'These guys are nothing and we can beat them.'"

Days passed with no communication from the killers as police raced frantically from one shooting to the next.

Police had to wait through 12 days and three more murders before they heard from the snipers again after a shooting outside a Ponderosa steakhouse. The snipers left behind a lengthy note demanding $10 million and some respect. They complained because they called the police hotline, and someone hung up on them.

"To reach this point, they really don't think they can get caught," says Douglas. "They think they're better than the cops and that's their downfall."

But now that police knew they had the killers in a real conversation, the investigation entered a bizarre stage. Chief Moose began responding to them in the only way possible - in public: "To the person who let us a message at the Ponderosa last night. You gave us a telephone number. We do want to talk to you. Call us at the number you provided. Thank you."

The next day, Moose was before the cameras again. Even though millions of people had a front row seat to this part of the investigation, Moose was speaking to a much smaller audience. The snipers had apparently called.

"The person you called could not hear everything you said," said Moose on Monday afternoon. "The audio was unclear and we want to get it right. Call us back so we can clearly understand."

They kept on talking, but the snipers kept shooting. And the next day, a bus driver was killed, the 13th victim.

The cat-and-mouse game continued but the police were closing in. By Tuesday night, Moose seemed to be negotiating: "We have researched the options you stated and found that it is not possible electronically to comply in the manner that you requested."

"This is like hostage negotiation. You stall for time," says Douglas.

But the snipers were anxious to talk, and not just to police. One of them called a priest Friday and said he was God and mentioned a robbery homicide at a liquor store in Montgomery, Ala. With a call to Montgomery Police Chief John Wilson, the end game began.

Wilson had one critical piece of evidence. A partial fingerprint found at the liquor store led investigators to John Malvo, a 17-year-old in Washington state. They tracked him to a house in Tacoma where he had lived with John Muhammed.

Once they had their names, they knew who to look for, and what they were driving: a blue Chevrolet caprice.

But Moose had one more strange message for the snipers, a reference to a Cherokee Indian folk-tale. "You asked us to say,'We have caught the sniper like a duck in a noose,'" he said at a press conference.

In the folk tale, the duck gets away. But within hours, Malvo and Muhammed were arrested. The rifle used in the shootings was found in their back seat, police said.

"That's when we knew it was over," says Doug Duncan, the Montgomery County executive who worked side by side with his police chief. "As we're getting ready to walk out, I just turned to Charles Moose and we gave each other a big hug. That was the high moment for me."

It had to be the crowning moment for Moose. Some 25 years ago, he was one of thousands of street cops, working anonymously on the streets of Portland, Ore. Now, everybody knows his name. How does it feel?

"I hope that people remember the big picture. There were over 1,000 people in the task force that made this happen. This is a community that came together to solve a problem," says Moose. "Maybe my name's easy to spell, but that's all it is. It's not about me."