He threw a picture to her LFD, but she blocked it. She already felt overwhelmed without seeing the husband’s face. “I don’t want to see a goddamn picture.”
Clarke smiled for the first time. “Hey, no problem. You don’t want to see, I don’t blame you. It’s not your life anyway. But what do you say? Log in to the encrypted server and unlock the GPS. Do some good?”
“No,” she said softly, defiantly, like a hammer wrapped in silk.
Clarke sat forward. “Say what?”
“I give you the GPS. Then what?”
“Then I track down Constance D’Arcy one way or another.”
“And leave me high and dry.”
Clarke shrugged. “I don’t see what that’s got to do with anything.”
“We see different. Like you said, I guess I need to take it up with my husband.” She grabbed her backpack and stood, suddenly needing to be outside. Far from Detective Darius Clarke and his corrosive contempt.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Clarke grabbed her by the wrist.
“Let go of me.” She tried to pull free, but his grip tightened painfully.
“You know, if we were in Virginia—” He cut himself short.
“Well, we’re not. This is DC. I’ve got rights.”
“Rights?” He shook his head and chuckled like she’d told him a joke he’d already heard but that he still found kind of funny. He laid his handcuffs on the table. “You really think anyone’s gonna kick up a fuss when they find out what you are? Go ahead, scream, I don’t care. Nobody’s riding to the rescue of some skinny-ass Gucci.”
“Let me go,” she repeated.
He pulled her closer. “You know why they call them Guccis, right? ’Cause clones are knockoffs of the real thing. Except you’re no Gucci, are you? You’re a cheap knockoff of a cheaper original. You’re not loaded like the rest of them. Got no money to hide behind. How you think that’s going to work out for you?” He let go of her wrist and reached for the check. “You’re going to need a friend out here. Might want to keep that in mind.”
“Oh, now we’re going to be friends?”
“Where’d you sleep last night?” Clarke asked rhetorically. “Might be I could work it so you’re a confidential informant for the purposes of this case. That way I could slip you a few bills. Get you off the street for a couple nights.”
Con hesitated. By this time tomorrow, she’d be broke again. Maybe she’d get lucky before nightfall and someone would offer her a meal and a place to sleep. Or maybe not. Maybe the Clarkes and Kalas of the world were the whole world. If so, she was facing not only another night on the street but a lifetime on the margins. Could she really afford to turn down his offer? But cooperating with him would be nothing more than a short-term fix. A few days and then she’d be right back in this same place. She only had one bargaining chip; she couldn’t afford to give it up on the cheap.
“Can I go?” she asked.
“What about your meat loaf?”
“Lost my appetite.”
“I still need that GPS,” he said.
“And I need my life back. Tell the husband if he wants the GPS, he should call me.”
Clarke smiled and shook his head. “I guess what they say about clones is true. You really don’t have a soul. Constance D’Arcy is missing, likely dead, and you won’t even do the right thing.”
“She’s not dead,” said Con, turning to leave. “I’m right here.”
CHAPTER TEN
Con walked until her fury at Darius Clarke had dulled, relieved to disappear among the throngs of tourists taking in the sights on the National Mall. She stopped in the Sculpture Garden at the National Gallery of Art and stood at the foot of a statue of red sheet metal, faded by the years and the elements. It rose above her like a giant insect, but a plaque identified it as Cheval Rouge （Red Horse）。 She stared up at the statue, trying to see what Alexander Calder had seen when he’d created it in 1974. It didn’t look like a horse—in her experience, horses didn’t have six legs—but she still thought it was beautiful whatever it was.
In the shade of a towering elm, she found an empty park bench where she could regroup and think things through. Now that she had calmed down some, she really wished she’d taken the damn meat loaf. And why had she been too scared to look at the husband’s picture? It was going to make her crazy until she knew more about him. She’d been so rattled that she hadn’t even asked his name. But it had been an overwhelming first day—from the lurching panic of discovering she was a clone to learning that the death of her original might not have been natural or accidental. Detective Clarke’s contempt had been one more thing than she could bear. And then there was the missing eighteen months and the cancerous self-doubt it was creating. Last night, she’d thought that if she filled in the blanks she would feel like less of an imposter, but so far the opposite was true. With each new revelation, she felt further and further removed from believing she was Con D’Arcy.