Page 240 of I Will Break You

NINETY-NINE

XERO

My most pressing priority is the man Camila found loitering around Mrs. Crowley’s home. I have a hunch that he could be Nocturne.

Having Nocturne might take us a step closer to Father and taking him down. It might even shed light on the conspiracy of who wants to destroy Amethyst.

An hour later, I step into an interrogation room, where Camila has already set him up with a lie detector. We skip the metal sounder up the urethra, as we haven’t caught him doing anything wrong.

He sits shirtless in tuxedo pants and a black cummerbund with electrodes stuck to a scarred chest of prominent ribs. From the looks of him, I’d guess he had a rough time in prison.

A blindfold covers the top half of his face, but I recognize him instantly from Amethyst’s photo of our fathers and her Uncle Clive.

The door swings shut behind me, making him flinch.

“Who’s there?”

“I apologize for the method of our introduction, but you’re a very difficult man to track.”

He breathes hard. “I know what this is about, and I’m innocent.”

I turn to Camila. “Have you calibrated his vitals?”

She nods. “Clive Bishop, aged forty-eight, born in Chicago, Illinois. Convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and distribution of illegal material. Served fourteen years and seven months in Alderney State Penitentiary.”

So, he really is Nocturne.

“Bishop? I thought the last name was Crowley?”

He sags in his seat. “My last name is Bishop.”

“What’s your relationship with Melonie Crowley?” I ask.

“She was married to my brother, Lyle.” He gulps. “Lyle Bishop.”

“Was?”

He coughs. “Lyle died in a car accident a month before I was arrested. He’d changed his last name after getting into trouble with the wrong crowd.”

My brow furrows. Amethyst and I both believed the road accident was bullshit, but it looks like Melonie was telling at least a partial truth. “Was he in the car alone?”

“He was with my niece,” he rasps. “She survived.”

I blow out a long breath. Amethyst hallucinated her father this entire time? I don’t understand why her mother and psychiatrist didn’t tell her he was no longer alive.

“Can I please know what this is about?” Nocturne asks.

“Are you the man who founded X-Cite Media?” I ask.

He clenches his teeth, his features twisting into a rictus of hatred. “I told you I was innocent! I may have set up the infrastructure, but I didn’t fill it with murderous filth.”

“Then who did?”

“I knew him as Dalton Greaves,” he snarls. “A business associate of my brother’s who used me as a front to broadcast snuff. When I got reported, he vanished, leaving me to get imprisoned.”

Nodding, I glance at the biometric readings and find that he’s being truthful. Nocturne’s story is consistent with the recruiter’s. I’m not even surprised at the confirmation that Father now makes snuff movies.

“Any idea where he might be now?” I ask.