STEVENS AND WINDERMERE waited while LePlavy called in a warrant. Then they all drove to the Port Authority office, where the supervisor was waiting with his hands on his hips and an I don’t have time for this shit expression on his face.
“We’re on the hunt for a forty-foot red container that came off the Ocean Constellation,” Windermere explained in the supervisor’s office. “The owner is shipping women into the country through your facility, so let’s just assume you’re going to bust your ass to help us, okay?”
The supervisor looked at her. Looked at Stevens and LePlavy. “You know that ship dropped off a thousand boxes,” he said. “You—”
“We know,” Windermere told him. “Just hook us up with the tape.”
> > >
THE SUPERVISOR LED THEM to the Port Authority’s security office, a large, windowless room filled with computer screens and banks of monitors. The place was cold, the air-conditioning on full blast, but Windermere forgot about the chill as soon as the supervisor brought up the footage from the Ocean Constellation’s arrival.
The Port Authority had cameras everywhere. On the pier and in the parking lots, in the vast marshaling yards amid stacks of containers, at the customs checkpoints and the entry and exit gates to the facility. They had manifests, too, and electronic scanners to track each container as the cranes lifted them from the ships, placed them on the backs of trucks or on train cars that shunted them away from the pier.
“Amazing,” Windermere told Stevens and LePlavy. “If we can pin down which box is ours, we can trace the manifest to the shipper, easy.”
“Sounds good to me,” Stevens said. “Let’s get to work.”
> > >
THEY STUDIED THE MONITORS for hours, an endless procession of containers of all sizes and colors.
How many of these boxes hold women? Windermere thought.
Most of the boxes had logos on their sides, the names of shipping companies or railroads, or big-box discount stores. Windermere watched them move from ship to shore and out through the exit gates, felt her senses dull with the monotony, the chill in the room the only thing keeping her awake.
She realized she was shivering, was about to ask for a sweater or a blanket—hell, a parka—when she caught the flash of red. “There,” she told Stevens and LePlavy, pointing at the screen. “Check it out.”
The two men squinted at the screen. Watched as a giant gantry crane lifted a plain red container from the Ocean Constellation’s hold and deposited it on the back of a flatbed truck.
“That’s a red tractor,” Stevens said, and she could tell from his voice that he was starting to feel it. “Just like the one Irina described.”
LePlavy copied something into a notebook. “I’ll run the owner data,” he said, standing. “You guys keep watching, make sure this is the one.”
“It’s the one,” Windermere said. She could feel it, plain and clear as she felt the sailor on the Ocean Constellation was hiding something. “Hurry up and tell us who owns this thing.”
LePlavy hurried off. Stevens hit play on the monitor again, and they watched as the driver of the truck slowly pulled out from under the crane, the container secured on the back of his flatbed. Windermere imagined the women inside, their fear, their disorientation. She closed her eyes and tried to chase the thought from her mind.
We’ll find who owns this box, she thought. We’ll track them down. We’ll find Catalina Milosovici and the rest of the women.
We’ll make these bastards pay.