But Fiester did not withdraw it.
Forensic reconstruction did not become stronger by pretending a possibility was a certainty.
A trajectory could show where a shot might have originated under a defined set of conditions.
It could not identify a gunman without additional evidence.
It could not establish motive.
It could not reveal coordination between firing positions simply because two lines could be drawn.
The limitations did not erase the question.
They defined it.
If one shot had come from the rear and another from the front or side, the visible sequence in the limousine might contain effects from separate impacts.
A throat wound could alter Kennedy’s posture.
A later shot could strike a newly exposed area.
The film would then record not one clean event but a chain of movements unfolding in fractions of a second.
That possibility transformed the Zapruder film from a simple visual answer into a complicated forensic timeline.
The critic walked around the projector.
“You are building an entire assassination out of a few frames.”
“No,” Fiester said.
“The assassination is already in those frames.
I am asking whether the accepted reconstruction accounts for everything visible in them.”
He pointed toward the screen.
“The film is blurred.
The angles are imperfect.
Witnesses disagreed.
Medical descriptions were disputed.
You could move a line by a few degrees and end up somewhere else.”
Fiester nodded.
Every criticism he named was real.
The film had limitations.
Camera perspective distorted distance.
Kennedy’s exact posture could not be reduced to a single flawless measurement.
Wound interpretation remained disputed.
Small changes in an assumed point could alter a long trajectory across the plaza.
Those uncertainties prevented the reconstruction from becoming final proof.
But they also prevented certainty from belonging exclusively to the people dismissing it.
Fiester placed the overlay back onto the screen.
“Then measure the uncertainty,” she said.
“Build the range.
Test every plausible position.
But do not declare the question closed before doing the work.”
That was the reversal the critic had not expected.
He had prepared to confront a dramatic conspiracy claim supported by suspicion.
Instead, Fiester kept returning to method.
When he demanded certainty, she refused to manufacture it.
When he attacked the limitations of the film, she acknowledged them.
When he accused her of choosing a conclusion, she asked for an alternative reconstruction that explained the same wound path and head position.
Her restraint made the theory harder to dismiss with ridicule alone.
The projector began running again.
Kennedy’s limousine moved through Dealey Plaza.
The figures in the car shifted.
The fatal impact occurred.
Kennedy moved back and toward the left.
Fiester stopped the film.
The critic spoke more quietly now.
“What would this actually change?”
It was the first question he had asked without already believing he knew the answer.
Fiester looked toward the frozen frame.
It would not change the date.
