Master's theorem is shown below,

The recursive function to be solved is shown below,

I understand that a refers to the number of recursive calls in this function (3 in this case). b refers to what the input size is being divided by in each recursive call. Which I believe should be 4.
d refers to the overhead of each recursive call, which should be 1.
So we have:
a = 3
b = 4...?
d = 1
The problem is, b apparently doesn't equal 4.
Now the actual answer shows that the answer is:

Which seems incorrect, since given the Master's Theorem, I don't see how n is being subtracted by a constant.
Thank you for your help.