“Sorry, I’m super thirsty,” Kit said, standing up. “Do you guys want water?”
“Oh no, I’m a terrible host.” Joyce stood up too but sat down again when Kit waved her off.
“No, it’s cool, just tell me where the glasses are.”
“They’re above the microwave. There’s filtered water in the fridge.” Joyce exhaled heavily and met Bishop’s eyes again. “Okay, let’s do this. You’re investigating Marco’s case, right?”
Bishop leaned back, aiming to appear as relaxed as possible, to keep the atmosphere calm. “Timothy Wellington’s parents are the ones who hired me, so I’m looking into Marco and Victor as they relate to Timothy. I’m an independent investigator. That means that if you tell me something the real cops need to know about, I’ll tell the right people. Anything else can stay in this room with us.” Bishop offered a crooked grin and chanced a joke. “I’m an ex-cop for a reason, and it’s not that I love the police.”
Joyce grinned a little back, then relaxed even more when Kit set a glass of water down next to her. Kit set a second down next to Bishop, then grabbed his own before sitting back down.
Bishop would have to praise Kit for that later—it was clever to use himself as an excuse to get Joyce a glass of water. Helping her without acting patronizing. Bishop couldn’t help being surprised by how much Kit’s presence seemed to reassure Joyce.
The realization nearly jarred Bishop out of his professional demeanor: he wasn’t used to seeing Kit as the helper.
He was used to seeing Kit as the victim.
“Your name came up as a friend of Marco’s,” Bishop said. Time to focus on the job—not the watchful young man with a fresh bruise on his neck. “I wanted to talk to you because I’ve been talking to all his friends. But from Kit’s text, it sounds like you have something more to tell me. Do you want to start with little stuff, or get the big stuff out of the way?”
Joyce took a sip of water, then squared her shoulders. “Let’s get it over with. I hooked up with Marco last semester at a party. I knew it was a bad idea, because he had a girlfriend, but I was drunk. I thought it would just be one time. Except then there was another party, and I was drunk again, and it kept happening.”
Bishop didn’t like where this was going, but he didn’t push in any particular direction. “How long did this keep happening?”
“The last month of spring semester. Then over summer, we started, um. Texting photos to each other.” Joyce twisted her water glass around on the table.
Kit straightened up, then slouched again in his chair. He grabbed his wrist, then buried his hands in his sweatshirt pockets, his gaze firmly on Joyce, his breathing steady. Like he was forcing himself to relax.
Bishop wondered about that, but he had to set it aside. His job was focusing on Joyce right now. “I know it’s easier said than done, but you don’t need to be embarrassed. Were these explicit photos?”
“Yes,” Joyce said quietly, then shook herself and continued with a stronger voice. “I didn’t show my face in any of them, because I was paranoid. Except it turns out I wasn’t paranoid, because Marco wasn’t keeping the photos to himself.”
Maybe in a better world, Bishop would have been surprised by that. He tapped his phone screen a few times to subtly turn off the recording. Better to just use his memory for this.
“How did you find that out?” Bishop asked.
“After I came back for fall semester, we started meeting up again. Um, one night, Marco remembered he hadn’t emailed his professor about something. He logged into his email on my computer.” Joyce shrugged. “He remembered to log off after, but I had a keylogger on my laptop, because I was worried about my old roommate borrowing my stuff. Like I said, I’m kind of paranoid. I was able to get his password and log in.”
Bishop nodded. “What did you find?”
Joyce paused for another sip of water. When she continued, she was calm, her determination carrying her onward. “I found his group chat with Tim and Victor. They were talking about selling girls’ photos to this asshole they knew. Like, a lot of girls. And this other guy was putting them online.”
Anger swept through Bishop, sudden and visceral.
All his willpower went towards keeping his veneer of calm intact. Joyce would be terrified if she knew how badly Bishop’s hand ached for his gun. Bishop couldn’t even look at Kit, because he had a feeling Kit would recognize the bloodlust in his eyes.
He needed evidence. He needed details. He needed to control himself, because he wasn’t a monster. But there was a moment in every case where Bishop felt which way justice would turn, and right now, this was it.
Maybe Marco’s crimes wouldn’t have risen to a level where Bishop needed to kill him. Maybe they would have. Bishop’s anger aside, at the end of the day his judgment didn’t matter in this case. Marco was already dead.
Bishop still needed to find out if a more dangerous monster haunted this case’s shadows.
First step, finding out who this asshole Joyce mentioned was. Because that sounded like the closest thing to a suspect Bishop had found so far in this case.
“Can you write down the account and login information?” Bishop asked calmly, pushing the pen and notebook towards her. “I can keep your name out of it, but this might be something I have to tell the cops about.”
Joyce started writing, but said, “Not sure how much good it will do you. One of them had deleted the chat records by the time I logged in again. Probably Tim or Victor. They were smarter than Marco.” She passed the notebook back, with an unexpectedly smug smile. “But I can give you the USB I downloaded the account history to the first time I logged in.”
Paranoid and proactive were two of Bishop’s favorite qualities in a witness.
