“Well, doctor, let’s hear your initial thoughts.”

Burke narrowed his eyes at Carter and said, “You really want to know? You sure about that?”

Carter turned his chair toward the young man and spread his arms. “Enlighten us.”

Burke looked around the room, sighed, and said, “Fine. From start to finish, that analysis was horse shit.”

Chapter 21

Nic heard Bristol chuckle at Burke’s remark, but then all eyes turned to the four displays mounted on the walls of the small conference room as they came to life with a zoomed-in shot of one of the three gunmen.

Nic looked down at the iPad in his hand in confusion and said, “Where is this coming from?”

“From me,” Burke said. “One of my masters degrees is in computer science.” He tapped the screen of his tablet and a slow-motion version of the gunman’s walk to the bank played over all the displays. As Burke continued, he used his Apple Pencil to pause and highlight certain areas of the video.

“Officer Juliano, your very first sentence contained a pretty glaring misrepresentation of the facts,” he said.

Nic gritted his teeth and fought to maintain his composure. He glanced over at ASAC Carter for rescue, having sensed the tension between Carter and Burke from the start. But Carter had a little smirk on his face, as if he was not-so-secretly enjoying the whole thing. Nic had hoped that this incident was his second chance at being accepted into the FBI academy, his chance to impress a high-ranking agent, one who maybe could pull some strings or write him up a letter of recommendation. But that prospect was slowly dying.

Burke continued, “You can see here and here, as the fabric bunches, you can make out the padding, which is trying to conceal her feminine frame.”

“Carter, did you hire this guy when Blockbuster Video went out of business?” Taz said. “We don’t have time for—”

“You can also tell here and here and then again here using gait analysis,” Burke said.

“What analysis?”

“When you analyze the way a person walks, you can learn quite a bit about them. And typically a person, even when trying to walk like a member of the opposite sex, will still subconsciously move in ways inherent to their gender. The FBI techs will run a detailed analysis to be sure, but I’m confident in my assessment. This unknown subject, the same person who later disables the security cameras, is most definitely a woman. And she’s trying to conceal that fact from us.”

Burke played a few sections of video in slow motion to further demonstrate his point. Nic watched each section of footage closely, and although he didn’t plan on voicing the realization, he had to admit that he could see Burke’s point.

“Where did you get that footage?” Nic asked. “We haven’t sent it to the FBI yet.”

“I pulled the files from your servers,” Burke said.

“You can’t just do that.”

“I believe I just did. The second thing you missed is the time that they entered. Why 9:47 a.m.?”