Chapter 5 Pearls #2
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.”
I laughed. “How the tables have turned.”
“I bet you were a little bit like Leah, though. I can see teenage Koray being super responsible—babysitting, and staying up late to do her homework. You’ve probably been a straight arrow since you passed the terrible twos.
” She rolled her eyes. “Though I can’t picture you sitting around in prim dresses. ”
“No way.”
I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell her how much I was like my father.
I hated that when I looked into the mirror I saw his gray eyes, the shape of his nose, the blond of his hair.
It was like I couldn’t escape him. He had cursed me with his blood, and with all the crimes he’d committed.
He was poison, destroying everything he touched.
And I felt like poison by extension, aware that I had the same power he had to destroy.
I had to keep it in check. I had to keep that contamination to myself, away from those I loved.
I couldn’t tell Monica. Sometimes I wanted to.
Monica was the closest thing I had to a best friend, beyond Nick.
But I couldn’t be honest with her about who I was.
I tried to be a good cop, and to do what I thought friends did: swapping snacks, gossiping, and keeping confidences.
But there were some things I just couldn’t say.
I knew Monica didn’t hold back with me. She talked freely about bad dates and how much her ex–mother-in-law annoyed her when she ran into her at the grocery store.
She vented about her shitty experiences with her doctor not listening to her about her endometriosis, and about how much debt her ex-husband stuck her with.
She could talk to me about her life, the entirety of it. History.
And I…I couldn’t. I wondered if she could sense that sometimes, my holding back. A couple of years ago I didn’t hold back. I honestly didn’t remember my father and what he’d done. I was free and genuine with her then.
Now I was different. My fury at him burned deep in my gut, and it poisoned all of my relationships. Maybe she chalked it up to my having had brushes with death last year. I didn’t know what she read into our long silences now.
I missed her. But I didn’t know how to say it without opening up some wound I couldn’t close.