Page 19 of The Sister's Curse

I looked at Sims. “Pastor Sims, we’ll be asking for Leah’s cell phone records, to establish a timeline of what happened…”

“I’m not so sure about that…” he began.

Leah stood up abruptly, reached into her pocket, came up with a phone in a glittery case, and handed it to me. I was surprised by her cooperation, honestly. Most teens would rather die than give their phone to an adult.

“I didn’t hurt him,” she hissed. Her cheeks bore bright spots of anger. “I would never.”

I glanced at Sims. His gaze had narrowed behind his glasses. I thought he was on the verge of objecting, but it would be bad form not to cooperate with the police. Right?

“There. You have it,” he said.

“Thank you. We appreciate your help. When we’re further along in the investigation, we’d like to come back.”And get Sims out of the room,I mentally added.

“Of course. But I want you to know…Leah really loveschildren. She wants to be a teacher. Before she gets married and devotes her life to God.” Sims smiled pleasantly.

I cocked my head. “Leah isn’t going to be a career educator?”

“No. She’s embracing her natural role as a mother. But those things take time.”

I bit my tongue hard. Leah looked away and dug her fingernails into the couch cushion beside her. I didn’t think a woman’s natural role was motherhood. I didn’t subscribe to the idea that biology was destiny.

But I had to remind myself to be objective, to focus on the case, on all the ripples affecting this community.

I didn’t want Mason’s near drowning to be attempted murder.

But for Leah’s sake, I didn’t want it to be an accident. I wanted someone else to be at fault, and for her to have a future.

Preferably one of her own choosing.

—

“What do you think? Do you think she’s to blame?”

Monica’s voice cut through my mental haze. I was standing beside my car at the far end of the church parking lot, where we’d retreated to regroup. I dug through Leah’s phone, scrolling through her apps, pictures, and texts. I found several casual games, tons of pictures of Leah and her friends. Most of the recent texts had been about a group homework project. I didn’t see any texts or calls from last night, except for her call to 911. She had a private messaging app, but the chat log was empty. I wasn’t confident that I could get much from forensic examination, even with a warrant.

“Dunno. But so far, the phone looks incredibly…wholesome. No nudes or mentions of weed or booze.”

Monica nodded. “She didn’t mind handing it over. Sounds like she wants to prove she didn’t do anything to Mason.”

“Yeah. I don’t think she intentionally did anything to hurt him, but there’s a world of unintentional harm out there.”

Monica cracked her gum. “I did a quick search on Sims. His church is about five years old. Before that, Sims was doing the pastor thing with Brooks Fellowship, across town, but there was some sort of falling-out, and he started his own church. There were some charges having to do with him and a pastor at Brooks having a fistfight on the front lawn of the church, but those got dropped.”

“Not what I think of when I think of clergy.”

“Well, it’s unlikely that any established conference would put up with that horseshit, but Sims created his own church, and here we are.”

Leah Sims’s social media was squeaky-clean. Weirdly squeaky. Her social media showed her singing in the church choir and teaching at vacation Bible school. I expected to see the normal teen-girl stuff—friends and sports and hobbies and clothes. She seemed to have only friends who were girls, no boys. All the young women dressed very conservatively—long skirts, sleeves, and hair. I zoomed in on the girls’ hands. They wore identical rings on their left ring fingers—petite gold bands with tiny, perfect white pearls in them. A quick image search showed that they were sold as purity rings.

“You think maybe Sims scrubbed the phone before she handed it over?”

“Maybe, but we’ll know for sure when we get her cell phone records.”

“Eh. That phone has seen some secrets. No teenager is squeaky-clean. Not even church kids.” Monica popped her gum again. “I sure as hell wasn’t when I was her age.”

I feigned shock, fluttering my fingers over my chest to mime a heart attack. “Monica Wozniak was not class valedictorian?”

“Salutatorian. But I sure did my share of sneaking out, and underage drinking. It’s a miracle I became a cop with as much time as I spent at house parties, trying to avoid the fuzz.”