“I’ll be right here,” Carmen said and leaned against the wall to wait.
It hadn’t quite been ten minutes, when Carmen began wondering what was taking him so long and another minute or two before she decided to go and check on him. Carmen got to the men's room and pushed the door.
“Kamau!” she called to him, but got no answer. “Kamau!”
It was then that she realized what was going on, laughed, accepted it and headed toward the newsroom. On the way, she stuck her head in Dan’s office.
“Going to check out another drive. Wanna join me?”
Dan bounced out of his seat and rushed to catch up with Carmen. “Where’d you get this one?”
“You don’t wanna know.” Carmen pushed the door and went in, leaving Dan standing there for a second or two before he followed her in.
“Hey, Max,” Carmen said as she went into Studio C.
“What’s up?” Max asked, but when he saw Dan rush in the studio, he knew that was where he needed to be.
“What’s on there, Carmen?” Dan asked anxiously as Max came in.
“What’s going on, guys?”
“Carmen’s got another drive,” Dan said, while Carmen accessed the folder.
“Where’d you get it?”
“You don’t wanna know,” Dan answered for Carmen and pulled up a chair.
“More videos,” Carmen said.
The drive contained more videos with some of the same women, “But these are different,” Carmen added.
“I see,” Dan said.
They were bondage, dominatrix and sex slave videos. Dan noticed that in some of the videos, some of the women looked like they’d been crying before they did their introduction. And in bondage, dominatrix and sex slave videos, Carmen noted that the women don’t seem to be there willingly, and one is actually crying while she is fucked by two men in her sex slave video. The videos all ended with a numeric code.
“There’s that code again,” Max said.
“It’s got to mean something,” Dan said and stood up.
“But what?” Carmen asked.
“Let’s start with what we know.”
“Katana Jackson found out something is going on at Abbate Construction, but she’s murdered before she can tell me what. I go to Abbate, and Calvin Simpson gives me a drive with videos on it, and then I come across this one and they’re both made by CTI.”
“We go see Castor, found him dead, but we do find shipping manifests from Ingram International that Castor was shredding,” Max added.
“Ingram International,” Dan paused. “That where you got the other drive?”
“Yes.” Carmen Paused. “And I have copies of journal entries for a company called Truckload Freight Transportation that correspond to the shipping manifests.”
Just then, Louis Carr came in the studio and his eyes got wide when he saw what was on the screen. Max quickly closed the window, but the damage was done.
“What the fuck are you three doing in here?” he demanded to know. It took a while for Carmen to lay it all out for him, but when she was done, Louis needed some clarification.
“So, if I’m understanding this correctly, somebody used Truckload Freight Transportation to transport something having to do with those women to Ingram International.”
“Right,” Dan said.