“Looking for something to pick the lock with.”
“After you,” Kamau said.
When Carmen looked up, he had the door opened and his hand extended toward it. “Thank you, sir,” Carmen said and thought, I could get used to this, as she went into the office.
Kamau followed her into the well-furnished one-man office. With gloves on, Carmen and Kamau searched the office and had been through the files and hadn’t found anything useful. Kamau went in a storage closet and went to an old file cabinet that was in the corner. He grabbed the handle of the top drawer and pulled, but it didn’t open. He tried the latch and pulled again; it still didn’t open. Kamau looked for a lock, but there was none.
“Did you find anything?” Carmen asked when she came into the closet.
“I was trying to get this open, but I can’t for some reason.”
“You want me to hold the latch while you pull?”
“Worth a try,” Kamau said and pulled the handle while Carmen held the latch. Both were surprised when instead of the top drawer opening, the entire column of drawers opened like a door to reveal a safe.
Kamau stumbled back and Carmen grabbed his arm to steady him while he regained his balance. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” Carmen said and looked at the safe. “I bet what we’re looking for is in there.”
Kamau stood next to Carmen and stared at the safe. “I bet you're right.”
“You wouldn’t just happen to be a master safe cracker,” Carmen paused and saw the look on his face, “would you?”
“I wouldn’t say I was a master, but I can open this safe.”
“You can?”
“This is a Gold Series electronic lock safe,” Kamau said as he approached it. “It’s made by a company called Murphy Safe. They advertised that it was fireproof and burglar proof.”
“How’d that work out for them?”
“They went out of business when people started posting videos of how to crack it.” They both laughed. “Watch my back,” Kamau said and went to work on the combination.
“Once they said it was burglar proof, I’m sure their competitors went to work on breaking into the safe right away.”
“They did.”
“How long is it gonna…”
“Got it.”
“Take.”
“I trained on this model on the farm.”
Now that the safe was opened, Kamau stood watch while Carmen searched the safe. What she found was a journal. She quickly flipped through the pages until Carmen found the pages she was looking for.
“The line items have transaction dates for a company called Truckload Freight Transportation that corresponded to the shipping manifests.”
“So Ingram International was using Truckload Freight to transport … what?” Kamau asked as he continued looking in the safe.
“I don’t know,” Carmen said as took pictures of the pages with her phone. “Did you find anything else?”
“Not really, just some flash drives.”
Carmen stopped. “Get them.”
When she was finished with the journal, since it was on, Carmen used Darby’s computer to copy the contents to her flash drive and they got out of there.