Brewer wasn’t convinced. She remained silent so Zack could focus on the screen. The first Hispanic male entered the convenience store, wearing a gray hoodie. He was soon followed by an African American couple. The man in the ball cap stood at the counter, facing just slightly away from the camera above him on his right, while the cashier bagged his groceries.

A Monte Carlo parked out front in the rain. Two men climbed out.

Hightower watched all this quietly. Slowly a little smile curled on his lips. “Hot damn, there’s gonna be some kind of a fracas, isn’t there?”

“Just watch, please.”

Zack did so. He saw the positioning of the three young men, the movement around the market of the African American couple, and the man in the cap at the magazine rack who could have just turned and walked out the door next to him, but instead squared off to the room.

When the man in the gray hoodie pulled the shotgun and pointed it at Gentry, Hightower just mumbled, “Last mistake of your dumb, short life, ese.”

The next few seconds of video chronicled the shoot-out, beginning with the shotgun blast and ending when Gentry fired his sixth round from his handgun, the two men at the counter crumpled into their own blood splatter on the floor, and the gray hoodie with the shotgun disappeared, falling backwards under the camera’s view.

The screen froze just after Gentry left the convenience store, three dead bodies in his wake.

Brewer sat on the edge of the desk next to Hightower and faced him. “Impressions?”

Hightower shrugged. “Boarding house rules.”

“Boarding house rules? What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the shot sequence. Everybody gets a first helping before anybody gets seconds. It’s textbook. Only a topflight close-quarters guy can cycle his weapon around a room like that, hit three guys center mass, back-stopping each one, and then recycle and shoot them all again before they hit the ground.”

Brewer frowned. “One of the Townsend operators reported that Gentry stole his handgun at the McDonald’s.” She looked through some notes on the iPad in her hand. “A Smith and Wesson model M&P. It’s hard to tell the weapon the man is using in the video due to the poor quality of the recording, but I had the analysts here look at the gun and they say it can’t be the same gun, because the Smith and Wesson has an external safety lever on the side, and Gentry doesn’t seem to take time to disengage a safety before he fires. What do you think of this analysis?”

“Ma’am, I think that analysis blows.”

Brewer reacted with obvious surprise, and an analyst in earshot looked back over his shoulder at the big man, a scowl on his face.

Brewer asked, “And why is that?”