The Lowdown (Dale Conley Action Thrillers Series Book 3) Read online

  Dale closed the book.

  “Pretty crazy stuff,” he said. “And the text is really sensational.” He pointed at the editor’s name. “I’m thinking this Dion Haco was a dime novelist.”

  “Maybe so,” Allie said. “But there’s no arguing with the primary sources. The KGC was real.”

  Percy leaned back in his seat, looking back toward the desk. “Erv, this is really fascinating stuff. Want to get your nose out of that magazine and learn something?”

  Ervin turned the desk chair around. It squeaked. “Oh, yes. Why don’t I come over there and help out the white folk too? Nah, I’m good. Thanks.”

  Percy smacked his hand on the table. “You know, son, why don’t you go and wait in the lobby. There’re other magazines out there. And a candy machine. More your speed.”

  “Whatever you say, Daddy.”

  Ervin stood up and rushed out of the office, slamming the door behind him.

  There was thick tension in the room, and a normal person would have felt uncomfortable, but Dale was still fascinated by—and a lot more interested in—the new historical story before him. So he broke the ice by continuing. “According to some of the sources, everyone from Jesse James to John Wilkes Booth were KGC. And Albert Pike may very well have been KGC. He was the head of the Freemasons! Some of these symbols and rituals, they’re very Mason-like themselves. The two had to be connected. It’s all so fascinating. We have proof,” he said poking his finger at the photocopy in front of him, “that the KGC was a significant factor in the Civil War. Why isn’t this stuff in the history books?”

  Dale saw Allie and Percy exchange a smile, like an inside joke. They were having a little fun at the expense of Dale’s passion.

  Allie patted him on the shoulder. “You can fix history when this assignment is over, Dale. For now, we need to figure out how this relates to the case. Back when Dad and I looked into KGC gold, we heard that KGC had never ceased to exist, that it went further underground, that it was still out there, protecting the gold. But you said that Jesse James referred to his organization as the Second KGC?”

  Dale and Percy nodded.

  Percy was still looking toward the door, clearly concerned about Ervin. He pulled his attention back to the other two. “What about the symbols on the bags? Were you two able to crack the code last night?”

  “Sort of,” Allie said and pulled one of the books from the stack. She opened it up, flipped a few pages, and handed it to Percy “I knew there was a code key in one of these books, but it took us a while to find it.”

  Dale stood up and looked over Percy’s shoulder at the image in the book. It was a list of symbols—dots and lines and odd shapes—coordinated with the letters of the alphabet.

  The bags of drugs that had been collected were in the center of the table. Dale pointed at the bags. “The problem is, though, that the symbols on the drug bags are in the same style, but several of our symbols don’t match up with the key.”

  Percy put the book down “Well, if they’re the Second KGC, emulating the original, maybe they’re emulating the original code as well.”

  Dale slowly nodded, not quite agreeing. He didn’t want to think that their answer was unattainable. There had to be something there. “Maybe … But …”

  He stared at the symbols on the bags, looked back and forth between the bags and the key. And he noticed something that he hadn’t picked up on last night. A consistency.

  He was on to something …

  “Look at this,” he said, picking up two of the bags. “All the codes on the tops of the bags are in the key. And …” He studied the symbols for a moment. “And every single one of our symbols that don’t match the key are on the bottoms of the bags.”

  “Interesting …” Percy said.

  Allie leaned in closer, her brow scrunched.

  Dale stared at the bags. There had to be a connection. Why would all the new symbols be on the bottoms of the bags?

  He looked for a similarity between the outlier symbols. They were so similar to the key, and yet—

  Then he saw it. His answer. He had it.

  “The bottom symbols. They’re upside down,” he said and looked at Percy and Allie. “Let’s see what happens when we fold one of the bags in half.”

  Dale bent one of the bags in half, bringing the bottom symbols to the top. The clear plastic revealed both sets of markings. The symbols aligned with each other, filling in their gaps.

  The symbols on top of the bag were:

  And the symbols at the bottom of the bag were:

  When they were combined, they formed:

  Allie looked frantically between the bag and the code key in the book. “All the symbols are in the key,” she said, bouncing in her seat. A moment later, though, he excitement abated. “But they spell T-W-E-N. Twen isn’t a word.”

  “Just hold on,” Dale said. “Let’s figure out the others.”

  They folded all the other bags and decoded them. Allie wrote them down as they worked, and when they were done, they had a list.

  THIR, FOR, TWEN, NULL

  Percy rubbed his mustache. “Well, for and null are words, but what are T-W-E-N and T-H-I-R?”

  The three of them were quiet for a moment as they stared at their list. There was the muffled sound of police work coming from behind the door.

  Dale loved a good puzzle. It was all about connections. Connections between words, ideas, letters, numbers—

  Numbers.

  “Look!” Dale said, running his finger along the list. “Add T-Y to the end of all these words except null. What do you get?”

  Allie smiled brightly. “Twenty, thirty, forty.”

  “Exactly,” Dale said. “Percentages. And look. Null was the bag that was given to Byron, the student at the high school. The personal bag that he smoked himself. Nothing happened to Byron. Thirty came from the bag Byron dealt to his friends. They felt the effects immediately but didn’t start convulsing until a few minutes later in the classroom. The bag with twenty was the bag that Percy and I took off the dealer we chased down. The guy he had dealt to said he had taken the drugs before. He didn’t die. He came back for more. And the forty bag we got from the Grizzly who said that the man who took the drugs started heaving almost immediately.”

  Percy nodded. “The higher the number, the higher the percentage of the poison.”

  “Exactly,” Dale said. “The Second KGC were experimenting, seeing how much it took to kill someone. They wanted to get them hooked then kill them.”

  Dale shook a fist with satisfaction. He always loved cracking these sorts of mysteries in a case.

  But quickly a realization struck him. Normally, when he would make a breakthrough like this, it would mean a drastic shift of fortunes. He’d dash out the door to Arancia and zip away to catch the bad guy. But not this time. The Grand Contingency was in swing.

  Dale sat back down.

  Allie leaned toward him. “Dale, what’s wrong?”

  “I figured it out too late. None of this matters now. They’re dumping it all.” Dale shook his head. “I was too late.”

  “Oh, Dale.” She put her hands on his, which were resting on the table. Percy walked over, put another hand on Dale’s shoulder.

  People liked to joke about the concept of “feeling the love.” But Dale could feel the love right then. He’d had a rare moment of despair, and now two people were there for him, touching him. It was nice to have.

  Percy patted his shoulder. “Be right back. I’m gonna go check on Erv.”

  “Sure thing,” Dale said.

  Allie watched Percy leave then took her hands off Dale’s.

  “You really care. You’re a good man,” she said. “You were back then too. Don’t think I didn’t notice. But you could also be a world-class jerk. Now, though … there’s something different about you.”

  “I’ve changed. I was still becoming who I am now when we met. A few final growing pains. But we had a lot of good times.”

  “
We did. A lot of bad times too. You were a real ass to me.”

  “Sometimes. But what about when you got your medical news. And you were scared. Who held you? Or when your dog got that little bump on her paw, and you freaked out. Who’d you call? Who talked you down?”

  She chuckled. “It ended up being a spider bite that she had. I was sure worried, though.” She paused, and the smile left her face. “Those are great times, but you’re focusing only on the good.”

  Dale was so flabbergasted he could hardly respond. “Isn’t that a good thing? To focus on the good instead of the bad.”

  She shook her head. “Bad is ten times more powerful than good. Like it or lump it. That’s why the evening news is full of negativity. That’s why a person can receive twenty compliments in a day but stay up that night thinking about the one nasty comment they got.”

  “I pity you, Allie. I really do. I choose to see the sunny side.”

  “Then why couldn’t you say it? After all the times I told you I loved you.”

  “You know why. The number. You’d had seventeen boyfriends before me. Seventeen. You were only twenty-six years old. Not guys you dated. You said yourself that they were full-fledged boyfriends, dudes you cared about, wanted a future with.”

  “And you said I was ‘fickle,’” she said, the victim once again.

  “You’ll forgive Number Eighteen for doubting that your feelings for him were genuine. And the fact that you kept dumping me—over and over—didn’t particularly convince me either. Every time we hit a rough spot, you just left. That’s fickle. You were my little runaway.”

  She rolled her eyes and tried to maintain her angered facade, but she grinned slightly. He’d used this joke on her before, and it amused her.

  Dale continued. “You were my run-run-run-run-runaway.” He was referencing the famous 1961 rock song by Del Shannon.

  Allie was smiling now. “You can’t always crack a joke to get out of difficult conversations, Dale. And I wasn’t a runaway.”

  “That’s right. You were more of a ‘runaround Sue,’” Dale said, expertly tossing in another Del Shannon reference. “Ya know, after you went out with that Greg guy.”

  Allie threw her hands up. But she was still smiling. “I wasn’t a runaround either. I went on one date with Greg, and it was two months after you and I broke up, you crazy shit!” Still smiling, looking at him playfully. “And stop quoting Del Shannon.”

  “Would that make me ‘Dale’ Shannon?” he said and arched an eyebrow, giving her a look of supremely self-assured cleverness.

  Allie groaned. Loudly. “Nerd. You’re nuttier than squirrel poo. You know, Dale, that big mouth of yours sure does get you in a lot of trouble.” She smiled. “But it always pulls you right back out.”

  Chapter 29

  Luanne took another blow to the cheek, and she fell onto the bed, onto the blue-and-white blanket her mother had made. She was crying.

  Dylan grabbed her shirt, pulled her back to her feet. “What were you doing at the barn, Luanne? What did you see?”

  “I just wanted to see what was happening, why all those people were here at our home.”

  “I told you to stay in the trailer.” He hit her again, this time with a closed fist. To her eye. Her head snapped back, and she felt blood rush to the skin. She stumbled back, nearly falling back onto the bed again.

  His face was snarling, looking down upon her. His arms were taught, skin flush. “I saw what you did.”

  Luanne’s sobs were so strong now, she could hardly reply. “I didn’t do nothing. I just looked.”

  “The desk, Luanne. You’ve been rummaging around my desk.”

  She didn’t reply, looked away from him. He’d found out. She breathed even harder now. Her vision got lighter. She thought she might pass out.

  “Come here,” he said.

  She slowly took a step toward him. Her head was bowed. She saw his shirt, smelled his sweat.

  “Look up.”

  She craned her neck and looked up into his ugly eyes.

  “Are you a detective now, Luanne? You’ve been real cute lately. Real cool. I had to give a lesson to your ignorant hillbilly cousin too, a little while ago. You and your stupid family have brought me nothing but a world of hurt. I want to know what exactly you think you’re doing looking into my affairs.”

  Somehow, with the wounds she’d taken, being inches away from him and feeling his size, his power, her fear escaped her. If he’d already taken so much from her, what more could he take?

  She set her jaw, determined. She narrowed her eyes and looked straight into him. “Who were those men in my barn?”

  Dylan spoke through his teeth. “Your barn?”

  “That’s right. And why did you meet with Mick Henderson last night?”

  Dylan looked at her for a couple moments and didn’t say anything. For once, she had truly stunned him. She felt a rush of power. And pride. She continued to look into him and then made to step past him in a dismissive way, moving toward the front of the trailer. He shoved his arm in front of her, his hand smacking into the wall. It made a loud noise. She jumped. The trailer shook.

  “No, no,” he said.

  He pulled his arm back to the side and swung it all the way across his body, catching the left side of her face. Her cheek exploded with pain, her body flew to the side, and she landed back on the bed.

  Her face was in the blanket. Pain enveloped her. She felt his presence looming.

  Dylan sniffed, cleared his throat. He slowly sat down next to her on the bed.

  “We’re not done here at all.”

  Chapter 30

  Jesse was disgusted at himself, having a black person driving him around—one wearing a gaudy, bright blue velvet suit with a matching fedora. But then he thought of the Grizzly as his chauffeur, his menial servant. This made him feel better about it.

  They parked on Rampart Street outside the same police station the federal agents had tried to take Jesse to after the event in the cemetery. They were directly across the street from the rear side of the building. Both men looked over at a parking lot full of squad cars and personal vehicles.

  “There it is,” the Grizzly said. He was pointing at a bright orange sports car. “Where you find that car, you’ll find them. That’s the white guy’s ride.”

  “Agent Conley,” Jesse said.

  The black guy, Agent Gordon, had said he worked for the DEA, but Conley was a mystery. He’d only said that he was part of the DOJ. That meant he could be FBI, OIG … Hell, the DEA was part of the DOJ.

  “How do you know this?” Jesse said. “My organization needs reputable intel.”

  He put a slight emphasis on the words my organization. The Grizzly needed to think that he was still part of the KGC.

  “We’ve been tailing them,” the Grizzly said. “You ever gonna tell me what this organization is?”

  Jesse didn’t appreciate the black man’s tone, but he knew this was an opportunity. An opportunity to strike back at Dylan. “Why not? You’ve done us good tonight. We’re called the Knights of the Golden Circle. Our leader is Dylan Mercer in Pensacola. And I’ll let you in on a little secret, Grizzly. Tonight we’re releasing all the drugs. In all the cities. You mind your turf, and you’ll be alright.”

  The Grizzly gave him a bizarre look. It was clear that he didn’t understand why Jesse had unloaded all that information on him. It was almost a look of distrust. Jesse had laid it on too thick. In his excitement to exact some level of revenge against Dylan, he hadn’t taken the time to carefully craft his persona, his projection of honesty. He’d been careless again.

  But it didn’t matter. Whether the Grizzly trusted him or not, he wouldn’t let Jesse’s bombshell piece of information about the Great Contingency go unheeded. He would let all his associates know. And this would put the damper on the KGC’s last hurrah tonight.

  Jesse was satisfied. He’d gotten his revenge on Dylan.

  But he wasn’t yet done with revenge. He still ha
d to portion some out to the two men who had gotten him into this mess in the first place.

  The federal agents.

  He looked back to the orange car. It was an exotic of some sort, kind of like a Lamborghini. It was parked under a tree, diagonally across two spaces. Dale Conley must have been one hell of a douchebag.

  It would be dangerous, yes, but Jesse was going to hover around this police station. It was worth the risk. These two feds had been the catalyst that brought his life spiraling down.

  Revenge was worth the risk.

  Chapter 31

  Luanne didn’t hesitate as she handed Dylan’s map over to the federal agent.

  “It’s my husband. Dylan,” she said. “He’s up to something. And I think it’s connected to the drug deaths that have been in the news. All that stuff about symbols.” She pointed at the small drawings on the map. “Dylan is searching for symbols.”

  Dale Conley pushed the sunglasses down his nose and studied the map.

  He was not at all what she expected. She’d called the New Orleans Police Department and asked if someone on the drug task force would meet her midway so that she could get them critical information. When she announced herself as the same person who had telephoned them the list of locations, Special Agent Dale Conley of the DOJ was keen on speaking with her. With the words federal agent in her mind, she’d envisioned a middle-aged man in a suit with a big mustache and a gruff persona. But when a shiny orange car pulled up to the Biloxi police station—where she’d waited at a picnic table under a shade tree on the corner of the property—a man stepped out who looked nothing like the image in her head. He wore a T-shirt and jeans and had a three-day beard. Sunglasses. He was in his thirties. Immensely handsome. Stepping out of the gleaming sports car, he looked like a movie star.