Constance by Matthew FitzSimmons

Author:Matthew FitzSimmons [FitzSimmons, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2021-08-31T23:00:00+00:00

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.

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