WEST McCRAY:
Did Keith abuse Sadie?
CLAIRE SOUTHERN:
[CRYING] I don’t know.
WEST McCRAY [STUDIO]: It’s clear Sadie had unfinished business with Keith. Was it that? Or did he succeed in hurting Mattie? Claire may have saved her daughter for one night, but Keith lived with them for a year.
MAY BETH FOSTER:
I just can’t believe … I can’t believe what you’re saying about him.
CLAIRE SOUTHERN:
It’s the truth.
MAY BETH FOSTER:
Sadie must’ve told me every time she saw me how much she hated him. I didn’t listen. I thought she was being a kid but … she was never a kid.
CLAIRE SOUTHERN:
Don’t start with me, May Beth.
MAY BETH FOSTER:
I’m not, Claire. Thank God … thank God you stopped him.
WEST McCRAY:
It sounds like Sadie was looking for Keith because she had something to settle.
MAY BETH FOSTER:
I don’t know why she’d go after him now, after all this time.
WEST McCRAY:
There’s something else. Keith was in a relationship with a woman whose brother was recently arrested for a sexually abusing children. He was arrested because of Sadie. I’ll walk you through that later, but without Sadie, it’s safe to assume he’d still be preying on children. I don’t know the extent of that man’s ties to Keith, but from what Claire’s telling me, it seems they have this predilection in common.
CLAIRE SOUTHERN:
Well, what’s the sister got to say about it?
WEST McCRAY:
She refuses to talk to me.
CLAIRE SOUTHERN:
That’s confirmation enough, isn’t it. [PAUSES] Did Sadie really get him arrested?
[PHONE RINGING]
WEST McCRAY:
Sorry. I have to take this. West McCray here.
JOE PERKINS [PHONE]: Hey, it’s Joe Perkins from the Bluebird. I’m awfully sorry to be calling you so late, but you told me to get in touch if there was anything else …
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]: It’s fine, Joe. What have you got for me?
JOE PERKINS [PHONE]: I was talking to one of the boys used to work at the motel … I let him go, soon as I made the sale. Ellis Jacobs. Anyway, I mentioned how you’d come along, asking questions and he says you need to get down here, soon as you can, and listen to what he’s got to say. It’s about your girl.
THE GIRLS
EPISODE 7
[THE GIRLS THEME]
ANNOUNCER:
The Girls is brought to you by Macmillan Publishers.
WEST McCRAY:
Ellis Jacobs is a twenty-five-year-old white male, but his boyish face suggests he’s five years younger than that. He’s had a rough life and he’ll be the first to tell you about it. He was kicked out of his house when he was seventeen. He insists it wasn’t because he was a bad kid. His mother’s boyfriend at the time just wasn’t a fan.
ELLIS JACOBS:
They might be married now, for all I know. He was an abusive prick and he beat the shit out of me and that’s the way it goes sometimes, I guess.
WEST McCRAY:
He was homeless until he was nearly twenty-four.
ELLIS JACOBS:
I didn’t have it as bad as some people. I couch-surfed a lot. I had a lot of good friends. But I was having problems getting my feet under me.
WEST McCRAY:
And then he met Keith.
But Ellis knew him as Darren.
ELLIS JACOBS:
What happened was, I got into this game online, when I was at a pal’s house. An MMO. Massive Multiplayer Online game. You can talk to people while you’re playing, and that’s how I met Darren. There was nothing sinister about it, we just struck up a friendship and he told me he knew what it was like, drifting from place to place. He wanted to help.
WEST McCRAY:
Just like that? You barely knew each other and he was offering you help?
ELLIS JACOBS:
I’m condensing it down for you. A lot. We had over a thousand hours in that game. It’s a lot of time to get to know someone, or at least feel like you have.
WEST McCRAY:
What did he tell you about himself?
ELLIS JACOBS:
Well, it’s just like I said—he said he was a drifter, that he was estranged from his family most of his life too. His dad used to beat him …
Now I wonder if any of it was true, but I don’t know. He got me my job at the Bluebird when I needed it the most. He never gave me any reason to think he was … bad. I mean, he was good to me.
He saved Joe’s life, for God’s sake.
Joe talked about Darren like he was a brother, like he was one of those guys that’ll do anything for you if you ask, but can never quite figure out how to get his own life together, you know?
WEST McCRAY:
Tell me about meeting Sadie.
ELLIS JACOBS:
I was working that whole night. I hadn’t heard a word about her when I changed off with Joe. She came into the office late, and her face was all busted up. She didn’t look good. First person she asked for was Darren.
WEST McCRAY:
But he wasn’t there that weekend.
ELLIS JACOBS:
Nope, but he hadn’t been around a long time before that either. Longest stretch we’d gone without seeing him. We still haven’t seen him.
WEST McCRAY:
Did Darren ever keep his whereabouts hidden from you?
ELLIS JACOBS:
Not from Joe, not from me. But we understood … you know, it was understood not to bug him about wherever he ended up, or share it with anyone who asked. That’s what Joe told me, anyway.
WEST McCRAY:
What happened with Sadie?
ELLIS JACOBS:
She said she was a family friend. She asked a lot of questions about him. The thing that stood out to me at the time was she was real persistent. I offered to leave a message for him, she refused. She asked if she could leave something for him in his room, I said no. She asked if I knew where he was and I wouldn’t tell her that either. After that, she gave up. Least, I thought she did.
WEST McCRAY [STUDIO]: That broken window in the bathroom?
Sadie.
WEST McCRAY [TO ELLIS]: And you didn’t hear the window break?
ELLIS JACOBS:
If I’m shut up in here, and the TV’s on … I didn’t hear it.
WEST McCRAY:
What made you decide to check the room?
ELLIS JACOBS:
She put it in my head. She was acting so fucking weird about it … I couldn’t shake it. So an hour or so later, I guess it was, I got up to look. My gut just told me to. From the front of the motel, it didn’t look like anything was going on, but I went right up to the window and I looked in. The curtains were drawn, but I could make out what I thought was some kind of … something moving around.
I opened the door, and there she was.
WEST McCRAY:
Tell me everything you remember.
ELLIS JACOBS:
It was … a lot to take in. The place was trashed. She’d done it. She was bleedin’ bad from her arm— WEST McCRAY:
Bleeding?
ELLIS JACOBS:
She broke the bathroom window, and she didn’t get through it clean. It tore up her arm.
WEST McCRAY:
You never told Joe about that window. You didn’t tell Joe about any of this until he told you about talking to me.
ELLIS JACOBS:
Yeah, that’s right.
See, Darren’s room is off-limits and I figured I’d lose my job if Joe got wind. I got like, no rules working there except that one and it’s the easiest rule in the world not to break so … I just left it. I didn’t know how long it was gonna be before Joe had the sale and I needed that money ’til it wasn’t there anymore. Soon as the Bluebird got bought, he let me go and I just … they’re gonna tear the place down. It seemed pointless to me to bring it up.
WEST McCRAY:
Okay, so let’s keep going from the point where she broke the window and cut her arm and you found her.
ELLIS JACOBS:
She cut it up enough it needed stitches. She didn’t get any, but it looked deep enough to warrant ’em and that’s when I realized how bad she must’ve wanted in his room. So I get in there, and I see her and she sees me and she pulls out a switchblade and she puts it to my throat and she asks me—she asks me … Jesus, this is hard to say out loud.
WEST McCRAY:
What did she ask you, Ellis?
ELLIS JACOBS:
She asked me if I was like him.
WEST McCRAY:
Like Darren?
ELLIS JACOBS:
Yeah.