Page 157 of Chameleon Killer

His gaze returned to the monitor. “Her mouth.”

I looked. Mallory was speaking again. This time the synchronization was close enough that I didn't immediately see the problem.

“I don't know whether you're telling me the truth.” Her lips matched. Mostly.

The unsub answered. “You know enough.”

Carter leaned toward the screen and touched two keys on his keyboard.

“What are you doing?”

“Backing it up.”

I frowned. “We can't interfere with⁠—”

“Not the live feed,” he snapped. “I’m recording it in here too. This is he local buffer.”

Impressed, I kept my opinion to myself for now. Ruiz confirmed via my headset that it wasn’t interfering, so I kept my eye on the screen that had captured Carter’s attention.

The live feed continued to play on the right monitor, but Carter was watching the left. He played it once, then again.

Mallory's face turned slightly toward the camera. “I don't know whether you're telling me the truth.”

Carter pointed. “There.”

“What?” I saw nothing.

“At the end.” Carter replayed it.

I watched her mouth rather than listening. Truth. The word matched. Probably. “It's a compressed video.” The guy was letting us watch, he didn’t have to do it in high def.

“No.” Carter's certainty irritated me.

“Frame loss can create apparent desynchronization.”

He shot me a glare. “I know what frame loss looks like.”

“Do you?”

His eyes cut toward mine. For a second neither of us spoke. Then he said, “I’m the news director for a nationwide network channel.”

He had a point, so I just nodded.

Carter enlarged the image. The resolution degraded immediately.

“Audio's cleaner than video,” Ruiz said over the line. “We can't establish sync at this quality.”

“Can you establish that it isn't synced?” I asked him, keeping an eye on Carter.

“No.”

Carter made a humorless sound. “Convenient.”

“It's technology, Carter, not a conspiracy.” I got the irritation, I did, but we could only do so much.

His gaze remained on Mallory. “With this guy, I'm not sure there's a difference.”

I couldn't argue with that. The live monitor changed. Mallory had leaned forward again.