“Well, you gave us copies of the surveillance vids of the restaurant robbery,” said Sushi.
“Right,” said the cop patronizingly. “And if you looked at ’em, you know they’re worth just about nothin.’ Those things are so out of focus and jerky that you wouldn’t recognize your own wife, half the time.”
“Right,” said Phule. “But in the Legion, we’ve got some pretty good equipment for enhancing that kind of raw material. And Sushi’s our best computer man-“
“Sure, and you think that’s gonna nail the perp,” said Dunstable, shaking his head as if Phule had told him he thought the robbery had been committed by little green elves. “I’ll tell you, the better computer enhancement gets, the less I trust it. The operator can make it look like anything he wants by the time he’s done, and ain’t nobody in the world can tell you how he got from where he started to where he ended up.”
“Give me a little more credit than that,” said Sushi. “We aren’t just clearing up the picture; all that does is show us the person’s appearance, which a good disguise or plastic surgery is going to change, anyway. With this equipment, I can pick out subtle patterns of movement and posture that are unique to the person, things even a trained actor can’t disguise.”
“There’s another point, too,” said Phule. “Sushi has certain contacts that-well, maybe I’d better not say too much about them. But they gave us a much wider sample of suspects than you’d come up with. As our chaplain told you, there are plenty of Landoorans that fit the description of the robber. But the man we’re after today doesn’t just fit the description, he has the right walk and everything else.”