Sadie(62)

WEST McCRAY [PHONE]: That’s what I’m thinking but … wait a second …


DANNY GILCHRIST [PHONE]: What?


WEST McCRAY [PHONE]: I forgot—I got so distracted by the photo. There was a matchbook in the room. Cooper’s. That’s a bar outside Montgomery.


DANNY GILCHRIST [PHONE]: Montgomery … the town Sadie passed through on her way to Langford.


WEST McCRAY [PHONE]: [PAUSE] Wait.


DANNY GILCHRIST [PHONE]: What?


WEST McCRAY [PHONE]: It’s owned by Silas Baker.


WEST McCRAY:

Silas Baker, the man charged with sex crimes against the children he coached on his T-ball team. At first, it feels coincidental, but when I dig deeper into his case, I find a news clipping where Baker’s family was pressed for comment. I discovered Marlee Singer is his younger sister.

She refuses to answer my calls.


WEST McCRAY [PHONE]: I should’ve done Montgomery first. Goddammit.


DANNY GILCHRIST [PHONE]: So you go back.


WEST McCRAY [PHONE]: This isn’t—I have a bad feeling about this, Danny.


DANNY GILCHRIST [PHONE]: You have to follow those too.


WEST McCRAY:

Silas Baker’s crimes were uncovered when a local boy, eighteen-year-old Javi Cruz, called 911 and reported a dead body in an abandoned house fifteen miles outside of town. When the Montgomery Sheriff’s Department arrived on the scene, they didn’t find a body. Instead, they found a collection of pornographic photographs of children. One of the officers recognized the kids in them and after that, all hell broke loose.

I head back to Montgomery to talk to Javi. He’s an interesting guy. He’s six foot three, lean, with light brown skin. He’s lived in Montgomery his whole life. This is his last year of high school and college is on the horizon. This was supposed to be the year he lived it up, but things have taken a hard turn for him, at least socially, in the wake of his role in Silas Baker’s arrest. Javi happened to be best friends with Silas Baker’s teenage twins, Noah and Kendall, and was even on one of Silas’s T-ball teams when he was a child himself. He says he was never abused.


JAVI CRUZ:

Everyone hates me now.


WEST McCRAY:

That’s rough.


JAVI CRUZ:

Well, not everyone. And, I mean, I don’t have it bad, compared to those kids, but I lost a lot of friends. There’s still a lot of Baker loyalists. You see the comments sections on stories about him?


WEST McCRAY:

They’re divided, to say the least.


JAVI CRUZ:

This city is never going to be the same.


WEST McCRAY:

And you didn’t know about Silas? You never experienced any untoward or sexually aggressive behavior from him when you …


JAVI CRUZ:

No! God, no. It was T-ball. We just … played T-ball. I didn’t know he was a freak. I didn’t know about the house until—I told you, it was the girl.


WEST McCRAY [STUDIO]: Sadie.

Javi met Sadie during her brief time in Montgomery.


JAVI CRUZ:

She told me her name was Lera.


WEST McCRAY:

Tell me how you two met.


JAVI CRUZ:

I was hanging at Cooper’s bar with Noah and Kendall, and another one of our friends—but she doesn’t want me to mention her name and she’s still talkin’ to me, so I’d just as soon not name her, if that’s okay with you.


WEST McCRAY:

Sure.


JAVI CRUZ:

We were drinking. We never had a problem being served at Cooper’s because Mr. Baker owns the place and I know that’s not right but you can’t tell me you never drank before you were legal. That’s how we killed time in Montgomery in the summer. It was no different than any other night, and then—she came.

She was like … You’re gonna think it’s stupid.


WEST McCRAY:

Try me.


JAVI CRUZ:

It’s hard to explain. The band was taking a break, and they put on some canned music, and Lera—Sadie—was … dancing, right in the middle of the bar by herself and I thought she was so beautiful, you know? I just wanted to know her. You ever met someone like that, and all you can think about is being near them? Just like … in their orbit?


WEST McCRAY:

Yeah. I married him.


JAVI CRUZ:

Right? That’s what I’m saying. I mean, I should say—she wasn’t a great dancer. [LAUGHS] She just didn’t care and that’s what made it beautiful to me. I’m not …

Noah calls—called me a benchwarmer.


WEST McCRAY:

What’s that mean?


JAVI CRUZ:

It’s the—it was the big joke in our crew. Like … I watch the action, but I don’t get in on it. But I got up, and I asked her to dance.

I danced with her.


WEST McCRAY:

What happened?


JAVI CRUZ:

I brought her back to our booth.

The friend—the one who doesn’t wanna be named—she thought Sadie was part of a family who had just moved into town and Sadie just went along with it. She and Kendall kind of … I don’t know.