A rap on the door jolted into the present. He walked over and said, “Who’s there?” There’d been a time when he would just have opened it. Now he thought twice about that kind of thing.
“It is I, Beeker,” came the familiar voice from the other side. Sushi opened the door, and Phule’s butler entered.
“Have a seat,” said Sushi, indicating the hotel suite’s couch and matching easy chairs. “What’s the occasion?”
“The captain is concerned about a situation involving a member of Reverend Ayres’s sect,” said the butler. “The difficulty is that many members have had their faces altered, so as to resemble their master. This entails obvious difficulties in telling one from another.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” said Sushi, lowering himself into a chair opposite the butler. “A couple of guys I know had the operation done, and now I can’t recognize ’em until they start talking. What do you want me to do about it?”
“The police have surveillance camera coverage of an incident in which they believe one of our people is the guilty party,” said Beeker, steepling his fingers. “The camera clearly shows a member of the Church of the King robbing and damaging a local restaurant and beating the owner. The Rev. Ayres points out that a large number of civilians also belong to his sect and suggests that one of them could be the responsible party.”
“Makes sense to me,” said Sushi. “But what do you think I can do about it?”
“The captain has asked to review the surveillance footage,” said Beeker. “It occurs to us that minute computer analysis of the voice and movements of the criminal could provide as good an identification as the face.”