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Salazar nodded. “It’s on our VPN.”
“I have a little piece of code that might help,” she said, patting her laptop case.
The elevator car opened and they walked along the corridor to a door that had been sealed with police tape. Salazar pulled this away and opened the padlock that had been fixed to the door.
They went into a tiny studio apartment – bed, kitchen, and living space, all in one room with a nano-shower cubicle off to one side. The window offered an excellent view of the penthouse opposite, but Mo-bot’s eyes weren’t on the building across the street. She was looking at the bloodstains and little marker flags that showed where bullets had hit the floor and walls. She shuddered at the thought of the horror perpetrated here against people she cared about.
“Okay to use this?” she asked, indicating the kitchen counter.
“We’ve been through the place so you’re good,” Salazar replied.
Mo-bot took her laptop out of its case and it switched on as she opened it.
“Can you log in?” she asked Salazar.
He came over and went to the NYPD Twentieth Precinct private network and logged in. He found the case file and opened the folder that contained hundreds of clips of video lifted from cameras around the building.
“This is everything we could get half an hour either side of the shooting,” he said.
“Thanks,” Mo-bot responded. She took control of her laptop and went to a folder marked “Gaiter.”
She highlighted the video footage and ran it through the Gaiter program.
“Neighbors see anything?” Sci asked.
Salazar shook his head. “They heard the chase and a woman yelling, but no one saw anything useful.” He looked over Mo-bot’s shoulder. “What is that?” he asked, pointing at the Gaiter status bar, which showed the program had almost finished analyzing the video files.
“No two humans walk the same way. Our gait is as unique as out fingerprints, so I created an AI program that’s studied millions of gait patterns from video footage taken around the world and has taught itself to identify a person solely from their gait,” Mo-bot replied. “Pretty cool, huh?”
She was used to the stunned reaction she received from people when she gave them these glimpses of the future, and Salazar didn’t disappoint.
“We’ve got six matches,” she said, looking at the search results.She scrolled down a tile display of six individuals who featured in multiple videos. One was the masked man.
“This looks like our shooter. He takes off his mask between that camera and this one.” She pointed at stills from two different sites. “Unfortunately, he’s got his back to the camera when he removes the ski mask.”
“Wow,” the detective remarked in awe. “You just saved us hours of legwork.”
“You think you could share the case files?” Sci asked, taking advantage of the goodwill their breakthrough had engendered. “We can see what else we can help with.”
Salazar nodded. “Sure. Once you’ve signed a contractor NDA, I’ll send you everything we’ve got.”
Mo-bot smiled as she clicked the still and Gaiter opened the relevant video file: a short clip taken from a traffic camera at a distance. The shooter walked away from the camera for a little while before pulling open a wire-mesh gate and hurrying into an alleyway beside an apartment building.
“You see it?” Mo-bot asked.
“Yeah,” Sci replied. He was at her shoulder, totally absorbed in the footage, which had started playing again from the beginning.
“See what?” Salazar asked.
Mo-bot waited until the suspect pulled open the gate.
“See how he reacts here?”
She saw Salazar register the significance this time.
“He nicks himself on the gate.”
“Right,” Sci said. “We don’t have a visual, but we just might have his DNA.”
