Constance (Constance #1)(54)

“No, nothing like that.”

“Then help us secure a warrant for Greer’s house. I’m not looking to frame him up. If there’s nothing there, then there’s nothing there. But if there is, and I know there is, then you’ve helped us get a murderer off the streets. Either way, I’d be grateful and be in a position to expedite a death certificate. Get you on your way back to DC and a new life. Isn’t that what you want? What do you say?”





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN


Con wondered later what she would have said next if there hadn’t been a knock at the door. Maybe it was because they’d been at it for hours and she was worn out, but she would have said just about anything to get out of that interrogation room. Including feeding Levi Greer to Detective Clarke. He’d seemed like a big, lost, sad puppy dog when they met, but she was starting to have her doubts about him. He had sure played mister innocent, no mention of a possible affair or that he and her original had been fighting. But then the knock at the door interrupted her, and she recoiled from what she was considering. Clarke glared, like a boxer robbed of a knockout by an untimely bell, at the square-jawed officer who stuck his head into the interrogation room door.

“Detective?” the officer said. “A minute?”

“What do you want? Can’t you see I’m in the middle of something here?”

“You’re going to want to see this.”

Something in his tone caught Clarke’s attention. Reluctantly, he told Con to sit tight and followed the officer out into the hall. He was only gone about a minute and returned looking concerned.

“Let’s go. We need to move you.” When she didn’t move quickly enough for his liking, he took her by the arm and led her out the door and to a bank of elevators.

“What’s going on?” she asked, resentful at being manhandled.

“Franklin Butler is here.”

Con’s mouth snapped shut. Whatever threat Darius Clarke might represent, it paled alongside Franklin Butler and his Children of Adam. She didn’t like to imagine what they would do should they get their hands on her. It would be open season. All Vernon Gaddis’s grim warnings about Virginia would become a reality.

“What does he want?” she asked.

He looked at her as if she were the slowest student in a remedial class. “The body of the murdered wife of a pro athlete was discovered by her clone. Two of the major media networks are already set up outside, and the others will be here soon. What do you think he wants?”

Well, when Clarke put it like that, he might have a point. And as for what Franklin Butler wanted, what did he ever want but attention? And what better place to get it than in Virginia outside a police station holding a clone. Throw in the national media, and the opportunity was tailor-made for his brand of self-aggrandizement and grandstanding. But knowing CoA, it could get dangerous in a hurry—the news would draw every hard-core anti-cloner for a hundred miles.

“How many?” she asked.

“There are only about twenty of those CoA lunatics out there right now, but it’ll be a mob scene in under an hour. He’s got a portable loudspeaker setup and is already giving speeches.”

They got on an elevator. Clarke punched “G,” but a hand blocked the doors from closing. A plainclothes Latino detective wedged himself inside. He had the look of a man who knew what happened to messengers bearing bad news.

“What is it, Moreno?” Clarke growled.

“Richmond cut Greer loose.”

Clarke cursed acrobatically. “Why? We needed him held.”

“He lawyered up. Money talks, man, you know that.”

“Greer’s going to beat us to the house. How’s the warrant application coming?”

“Waiting on your witness,” Moreno said to Clarke.

“No time for that now. Go with what we’ve got. Hope it’s enough.”

“You got it.”

“And post a car at his place. If he runs or tries to take anything out of that house, I want to know about it.”

Moreno nodded and stepped back off the elevator. Clarke stared lasers into the closing doors. He and Con rode in silence down to the garage, where three uniformed officers were waiting for them.

“What’re we doing?” Con asked.

“It’s shift change. We’re going to use it to sneak you out. We had your car towed here from the farm. The media won’t know it yet, so Bennett here,” Clarke said, pointing to a squat, blue-eyed woman whose jaw seemed fused closed, “is going to drive it out.”

“Where will I be?” Con asked.

“In the trunk. The other two officers will leave first, so that hopefully the media gets bored and stops reacting to every vehicle coming in or out.” Clarke turned to Bennett. “How does it look out there?”

“Local news plus CNN and Fox. The others won’t be far behind,” she said.

“Vultures.”

“Where are they taking me?” Con asked.

“To a motel. It’s all arranged. We’re going to finish our conversation about these men who were at the farm. Until then, you need to lay low.”

Put another way, Clarke would protect her as long as she served a purpose. After that, he’d cut her loose and she’d be on her own again, which meant she needed to assume she was on her own now.