Sgt. Ortiz was the first to dispute Burke’s inside-man theory. “They could have had someone else out there watching since the place opened and knew exactly who entered the building. And one of those hostages is probably the reason for all this.”

Nic nodded. “Right, they wait for a big fish to enter and then they force him to hand over the contents of his personal vault.”

Burke rubbed both his temples. “Highly unlikely, but moving on. This group triggered the alarm and then doubled-down with a 911 call. They wanted a standoff, and then they stalled for time by asking for an SSA.”

“And why would they do that, Doogie Howser?” Taz said with a little smirk.

Burke cocked his head. “I assume that was supposed to be an insult, and while I do understand the reference and correlation, please try to restrict your taunting to things that happened this century, grandpa. In answer to your question, if we knew why they were stalling, then we would be able to determine their objective. But we don’t have enough data points for that yet. What is obvious is that they do not intend on killing anyone. At least not at this stage in their plan.”

“Son, you seem like a bright kid,” Deputy Chief Edgar said, “but we’ve all seen the way the big one played with that woman’s life.”

Burke sighed and started tapping his iPad. He wished people would just trust him. Life would be so much simpler and more productive if he didn’t have to explain every word that came out of his mouth. “If you watch the video closely, chief, you can see that the young female was in no real danger.”

Taz pulled out his cell phone. “I’m gonna play Candy Crush. Let me know when the lecture is over and we can get back to work.”

Burke opened his mouth to verbally attack the SWAT commander, but Nic Juliano spoke first: “Taz, give the kid a chance. I think I know where he’s going with this.”

Ortiz rolled his eyes and jammed his phone back into a pants pocket. “Okay, dazzle me.”

Burke pushed the video feed to all of the monitors and zoomed in on the big man’s hands and the gun. He said, “It’s a bit of a magician’s trick for playing Russian roulette. You spin the cylinder, but catch it for a millisecond as you close it. That way you’ve seen the positioning of the bullet and always know the risks and how many times you can pull the trigger.”

“Bullshit,” Taz said.

“Plus, when you understand the laws of physics, specifically the concept of centripetal force—the force acting on a body in curvilinear motion that is directed toward the center of the curvature or axis of rotation—you can predict that a bullet of such a high caliber and weight will always pull downward when spun like that,” Burke said. “Which means the bullet will naturally pull away from the barrel of the gun. It involves another concept called gravity. You should Google it.”