He stared impassively at her as if waiting out a recalcitrant child.
“Fine. What do you want to know?” she said, reminding herself that her goal was to get out of there, not butt heads with Clarke. She’d keep it simple, but she’d answer his questions. She wasn’t going to give him an excuse to detain her any longer than was absolutely necessary.
“Let’s start at the beginning.”
“Define the beginning?”
He looked down the bridge of his nose at her, warning her not to get cute with him. “You arrive at the farm. What happened next?”
“I searched the barn and the silo first. Didn’t seem like anyone had been there in forever.”
“And you were alone?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Okay,” Clarke said, making a note. “Then what? The house? What did you see?”
“You know,” she said.
“Let me hear it in your words.”
“I saw,” she said, and faltered as the gruesome slideshow started up again in her mind. “I saw. Her. Like that.”
“Dead,” he prompted. “What were your impressions?”
“What the hell?” she said, squeezing her eyes shut, trying in vain not to picture it. “That it was bad. Really bad.”
“Was it your vomit in the hallway?”
“She was murdered,” Con said in her own defense.
“That she was,” he said as if it were the first time he had considered the possibility. “It hard for you? To see her like that?”
“What do you think?”
“Beats me. Doesn’t it validate your entire existence?”
“Fuck you.” It was out of her mouth before she could stop herself. She needed to be more careful; she wasn’t in DC anymore. She couldn’t afford to get into it with Clarke. This was his kingdom, and he’d already made it clear how he ruled it. Fortunately, he seemed inclined to take her outburst in stride for now.
“So what next?” he asked.
“I ran. Outside. Needed fresh air.”
“And then you called me.”
“Then I called you,” she agreed.
“And you were alone?”
“Yeah, I already said that.”
He took his time studying her. She could tell he was trying to decide whether she was holding out on him. Fair enough, she was. She didn’t know exactly why she hadn’t mentioned Pockmark and his men or the unknown drone that had run them off. Maybe because it sounded batshit crazy even to her and was the kind of twist that might make him hesitant to let her go. He’d asked for the body; she’d delivered it. That was all he was getting from her.
“Just inspired to finally do your civic duty?” he said with undisguised cynicism.
She leaned forward in her seat, seeing no option but to take offense at his insinuation. “What do you want from me? You got what you needed, didn’t you?”
He sighed and leaned forward in his own seat, mirroring her, letting her know the degree to which he didn’t believe her. “Take me through it again. From the top.”
She didn’t have a word for how much she loathed him.
For the next few hours, Clarke walked her back and forth through her grisly discovery at the farm, taking a slightly different tack each time, looking for anything that might jog her memory—chronology, sounds, smells, emotions. It was exhausting, like being in a verbal fistfight. Clarke kept trying to punch holes in her story while she did her best to parry and keep things more or less straight. It didn’t help that he was very, very good at his job. By the end, even she had doubts about what she was saying—including the parts she knew were true.
It went on so long that she began to suspect that he had an ulterior motive. “Am I a suspect?”
“That what you think? No, we don’t have an exact time of death yet, but judging by the decomp of the body, I’d say it’s been a while. You’re off the hook for that much at least. Constance D’Arcy has been dead since before you were born.”
“Clever.”
“One hell of an alibi, though,” he said.
“So why am I really here? If I’m not—”
“Why were you at Levi Greer’s house this morning?” he asked, cutting her off midsentence. It was the first time Clarke had mentioned Greer, and it felt like he was finally getting around to what was actually on his mind.
“To talk.”
“You mean make a deal.”
“Yeah, I guess. He said if I gave the police the GPS of his wife’s location that he would help me . . .” She drifted off, unsure how to put it.