Free Resurrection Express by Stephen Romano

businessmen who grease the wheel. Not to mention well-placed criminal types who are in it up to their eyeballs. Most of these men have stock in major corporations and use their leverage in very bad ways.”
    “You’re talking about David Hartman?”
    “Of course I am.”
    “So you figure your daughter was abducted into some kind of trafficking network for sick richies?”
    “It’s a little more complicated . . . but, yes, that’s the essential truth.”
    The Sarge chimes in again. “These photos were stolen by our man from a high-security database out of Houston. An encrypted series of sub-files hidden real well in the records of a corporate branch of Texas Data Concepts.”
    Jenison goes into her briefcase and removes a cigarette from somewhere in there. She doesn’t light it. “The IRS was conducting an investigation of David Hartman’s assets about a year and a half ago, in collaboration with the FBI. What they came up with was an elaborate money-laundering scam that involved Hartman using his stock in Texas Data Concepts as leverage over some of the CEOs. That was what they knew  . . . but they could never prove it officially, because people started disappearing, along with certain documentation.”
    “Doesn’t surprise me.”
    “It shouldn’t. What should surprise you is that the FBI backed off and never came at Hartman or TDC ever again.”
    “The Feds never do that,” says the Sarge. “They’re like fuckin’ bulldogs most of the time. They hold on to a dream or a nightmare.”
    Jenison makes a disgusted noise. “Sad, isn’t it? A fat gangster waves his hand and it all goes away. The case was never even handed off to the Agency. They buried it. Meaning something very big was happening.”
    “You’re saying to me that Texas Data Concepts has been fronting for a goddamn white slavery ring?”
    “Not the company itself,” Jenison says. “Just some of the executives. We’re pretty sure Hartman’s still in bed with them. He’s been kidnapping people, sending them underground, probably selling them to the highest bidder. Mostly young women. Top-dollar merchandise, so to speak. My people got very close to him,delivered some specific details about the operation. Our last solid connection was these photographs.”
    “Who stole them for you?”
    “The same man who photographed Hartman four months ago with your wife. He got in pretty deep. Undercover as an assassin for Hartman’s crew. But he was dangerous, unstable. Had a drug problem.”
    “So your man leaked some tidbits and got himself killed.”
    “For starters.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “After Hartman plugged the leak, they burned everything that could lead anyone back to their trafficking ring. We knew a lot by then. I was following up on the investigation privately. I had all the files from the FBI, but we never found anything new that gave locations where people were being held. We just found little crumbs. Photos mostly. Disgusting stuff. Most of it was pulled off private databases. Laptops and PCs owned by key executive officers of the company. You’d be amazed at how indiscreet some of those people were in their own offices.”
    “No, actually, I wouldn’t.”
    “My undercover man was good, in spite of his personal problems. He found files that had been deleted. Things we were able to reconstruct. There were a few e-mails that implicated Hartman directly. But it all dried up after my man went away. They locked everything up tight. That was four months ago.”
    “So what we have here is a bunch of well-connected pervs with stashes of young female flesh all over the state—maybe even the country. You’ve lost the trail and they torched the leads. You need me to come back at them.”
    “You’re still batting a thousand, Elroy.”
    “What makes you think I can find something they missed?”
    “That’s just it—they didn’t miss anything . My men have investigated Hartman with a microscope. He’s