Page 28 of Deadly Sacrifice

“Oh, sure. Of course.” Katie’s face was warm as she dug her temporary business card out of her backpack. “I’m usually down in the computer lab here. It was great to get out and help in a different way today.”

“I’d love to—see you again sometime,” Jeff said. “If that’s okay.”

“I’m not sure, to be honest. I’ll check with my supervisor. I’ll have to get back to you on that,” Katie said.

“I’ll reach out then.”

“Sure.” She spun around to head for the door, suppressing a grin. Warm wind tugged at her hair and fluttered her skirt as she walked into the station.

The building’s cool air-conditioning was a stark contrast to the tropics outdoors. With each step towards the stairs leading to her familiar Cave, possibilities energized Katie. She held the drive tightly in her hand—she couldn’t wait to see what was on it. Maybe she’d learn a little more about Jeff while she was studying his work, and that wouldn’t be a bad thing either.

19

LEI

At four o’clock that afternoon,as soon as she got to the station from Haleakala’s crime scene, Lei went downstairs to visit her young protégée. Katie’s Cave was a cool, dim relief after all the elements and two rides with an airsick ME on the chopper.

Katie had on a pair of headphones and her eyes were on her monitors. She paid zero attention as Lei walked straight over to the water dispenser and grabbed a mug that saidDO IT FOR THE PLOT.She filled the mug, chugged it, filled it again, and held it aloft. “Hey, Katie. What does this one mean?”

Katie glanced over and saw Lei. She tugged her headphones off, blinking owllike through purple specs. “What?”

“These mugs are all internet sayings, but this one seems like it’s about books.” Lei waggled the mug.

“Nope, that means to ‘do something for the story to tell.’ On social media, or at a party.” Katie leaned back in her chair, stretching up her arms and yawning widely. “Books? What’re those?”

“Weird. Okay.” Lei shook her head. “So, how did your first witness interview go up at the park?”

“Awesome.” Katie bounced a little on her fancy chair. “I met someone. He’s super cute—one of the witnesses who spotted the body. A photographer and programmer. Not only did he discover the body in the Crater, but he also got photos of someone on the lava at La Perouse Bay by accident. They might be of the perp! I’m just getting them sorted now.”

Lei frowned. “Back up the bus,sistah. That can’t be a coincidence.” She pulled out a chair to sit beside Katie, noticing for the first time that Katie wore a tight Lycra shirt under her white blouse and a pair of black tights under a flirty plaid skirt; her shiny hair was trying to escape the braid hanging down her back. “I see you modified your outfit to the situation.”

“Yeah, going up a ten thousand foot volcano to interview witnesses in a miniskirt didn’t seem professional,” Katie said. “And as to coincidence, I believe Jeff.”

Lei frowned. “Jeff? Who’s that?”

“The guy I met. The photographer. Jeff Brian is his name. No priors, clean record, new to Maui.” Katie reached for her own mug to swig some water; hers readGOAT: IYKYK.“He had a good reason to be at La Perouse—photography in the early morning, same reason he was on Haleakala. His mentor, Randy Hollister, was the one who drove and chose the destination they went to where they ended up finding the victim. He couldn’t have had anything to do with it.”

Lei would reserve judgement on that. “So are the photos any good?”

“Take a look at this.” Katie clicked her mouse and zoomed in on the image on her monitor. “See, this was taken with a 400-millimeter telephoto. Pretty good lens: crisp, and not a lot of noise or distortion. But the subject is a long distance away. The images are RAW files. I’m hoping to tease more data out of them.”

“Raw files?”

“High-end cameras shoot in a format called RAW. It’s a data file, not an image file, and it has a lot more information to work with. For digital images, it’s as close to an ‘original’ as you’re going to get.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“Think evidence, courts of law, chain of custody. Your ‘Three Cs’: Care, Custody, and Control. In the old days, detectives would want the original negatives, because someone could tweak a printed image. Without the negatives, it was hard to prove that the picture hadn’t been altered.”

“Okay, I get that. What’s that have to do with RAW files?”

“Digital images are incredibly easy to manipulate. You hear people saying, ‘Oh, that was photoshopped’ because the name of a software program has become a verb. On a computer, you can add people to scenes or take them out, put a different head on someone else’s body, and make it look real. AI has exploded that even further.”

“It’s a big deal for photojournalists, isn’t it?”

“Yes! And for law enforcement as well. So, like I said, RAW files aren’t image files, like a JPEG or a TIFF is. They’re data files. For us to see the picture, a computer has to generate a preview of what that would look like as a JPEG, for instance. But no matter what you do with that preview, the original RAW file isn’t altered. It can’t be.”

“So, in that way, it’s like the original negative . . .” Lei sipped her water. “But more useful.”

---