JAVI CRUZ:
[EXHALES] I asked her how she knew. How she knew that stuff was there and she told me she’d been parked outside the Bakers’ house all night and she saw Silas leave his place really early in the morning, and she thought it was weird so she followed him all the way to that house … she said she hid ’til he left and went looking and that’s what she found. I don’t know if that’s true, but she wanted me to call the cops.
I want to say I did the right thing right away, I wanna tell you that I did that but …
WEST McCRAY:
Javi was too overwhelmed, too distraught, to understand the scope of what was happening. Sadie demanded immediate action.
WEST McCRAY [TO JAVI]: Was Sadie willing to call the cops?
JAVI CRUZ:
That’s the thing! She wouldn’t do it herself. She said she was scared.
WEST McCRAY:
You didn’t think it was odd that she was parked outside the Bakers’ house all night? You didn’t ask her to explain that? It sounds like she might have had an inkling something was going on from the outset.
JAVI CRUZ:
Once I saw those pictures, I wasn’t thinking about anything but that. This fucking broke me. I’m in therapy about it. And that’s why I couldn’t call the cops at first … Kendall and Noah were my best friends, and Mr. Baker—I’d known Mr. Baker since I was a kid and it didn’t—none of it made sense. We drove back into town, and she just kept telling me I had to do this because if I didn’t …
WEST McCRAY:
If you didn’t, what?
JAVI CRUZ:
I don’t know. We got back into town. She pulled up to the Rose Mart—a convenience store down the road. It’s got a pay phone …
She said if I couldn’t do it outright, to call the cops and tell ’em I wanted to report a dead body, hang up without ID’ing myself and let the police find it all.
WEST McCRAY: You refused, initially.
JAVI CRUZ:
I was fucked up. Scared out of my mind.
WEST McCRAY:
When you told Sadie that, how did she react?
JAVI CRUZ:
She left me there.
WEST McCRAY:
But you ended up making the call right after.
911 DISPATCHER [PHONE]:
911, what is your emergency?
JAVI CRUZ [PHONE]: Uh, I want to report a dead body.
WEST McCRAY:
Javi did as Sadie suggested: he left directions to the house and hung up before he could identify himself.
After the pornography was found, the Montgomery Sheriff’s Department pulled security footage from outside the Rose Mart and identified their mystery caller. I got to look at it. Sadie isn’t with Javi as he braces himself to make the call. It was after she drove off. He stands in front of the phone, pacing back and forth for ten minutes, before finally bringing the receiver to his ear. He makes the call and he goes home, where he shuts himself in his room and won’t talk to anyone until the police knock on his door.
Sadie ended up at Silas Baker’s.
JAVI CRUZ:
Kendall and Noah blew up my phone about it. I never answered their texts, but …
WEST McCRAY [STUDIO]: The Bakers are not granting any media requests.
JAVI CRUZ:
They said Sadie showed up at their place because I told her to meet me there, which was a lie. Noah tried to get ahold of me, but I wasn’t answering my texts.
I guess it was fine, for a little while, and then Mr. Baker came home. They told me Sadie wasn’t who she said she was and that I was a dumbass for falling for her. They said she stole Mr. Baker’s phone and attacked him— WEST McCRAY:
Attacked him?
JAVI CRUZ:
Yeah, with a knife. In their driveway.
They said she got in her car and cleared out before anyone could do anything about it and that Mr. Baker didn’t want to press charges because it was obvious she was “disturbed.”
All the time that was happening, the police were at that house.
WEST McCRAY:
So Kendall and Noah suggested it got physically violent between Mr. Baker and Sadie. Did they say that he hurt her?
JAVI CRUZ:
They didn’t say anything about that. Doesn’t mean he didn’t though, just that they knew not to put it in writing, if he did.
WEST McCRAY:
And Sadie wasn’t hurt when you met her the previous night at Cooper’s or that morning at Lili’s?
JAVI CRUZ:
Like hurt … how?
WEST McCRAY:
According to a young lady who met up with Sadie when she was in the process of leaving Montgomery, Sadie was injured. She had a bruised face, suggesting a broken nose, and a scraped chin.
If it didn’t happen at the Bakers’ house, it would have happened shortly thereafter.
JAVI CRUZ:
Jesus.
WEST McCRAY:
Did Sadie ever mention a man named Darren or Keith to you?
JAVI CRUZ:
No … no, not that I can remember.
You think she’s okay?
WEST McCRAY:
That’s what I’m trying to find out.
JAVI CRUZ:
But do you think she’s okay?
AUTOMATED FEMALE VOICE [PHONE]: You have reached the voicemail of— MARLEE SINGER [PHONE]: Marlee Singer.
AUTOMATED FEMALE VOICE [PHONE]: Please leave a message at the tone.
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]: Marlee, West McCray here.
Look, I know you don’t want me to keep calling you, but here’s the thing—I have mounting evidence that suggests you saw Sadie, that you directed her to your brother, Silas’s house. You knew Darren. I think it’s likely Silas did too. I would really appreciate if we could talk about that. I’m just trying to bring a girl back home to a family who misses her.
Please call me.
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]: Hey, May Beth. Is Claire around?
MAY BETH FOSTER [PHONE]: No. She’s still … she hasn’t been back.
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]: Since I last called? Are you kidding me?
MAY BETH FOSTER [PHONE]: No. I don’t know if—I mean, she’s got some things here I’d like to think she wouldn’t have left without, but …
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]: I’m headed back to Cold Creek. Call me if she turns up in the meantime.
MAY BETH FOSTER [PHONE]: Why, what have you found?
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]: I don’t know.
sadie
Farfield is five days from Langford.
I feel every single mile like a cut across my skin. This drive has been the hardest. The ache of it, the ugliness. The pain of holding the same position for hours, the way the joints in my fingers have started to seize from gripping the wheel so tight that when I finally stop the car, I know I’ll still feel it there in my hands.
When the town sign comes into view at last, there’s no relief in it.
Farfield makes up the averages of all the places I’ve been; not so riddled by poverty it hurts to look at, or as painful as Montgomery was in all of its shine. Here, some parts are ravaged, others only a little down on their luck, then it turns into this economic gradient going up: nice, nicer, nicest. The place Keith is living is on the Down on Its Luck side of a town, a kiss in the direction of something nicer, except it’s facing the wrong way. It’s a plain two-story with flaking white paint on its worn siding.
I park across the street.
My heart pounds, my blood flows through my veins, everything working how it’s supposed to. I watch the house for a long time, like I did outside of Silas’s, steeling myself for that moment I’ll have to see him before I do anything else.
All I have to do is survive that moment to get through the rest.