CHAPTER 14 - Raleigh, North Carolina Friday, July 19, 2024

CHAPTER 14

Raleigh, North Carolina Friday, July 19, 2024

ALTHOUGH THE MAN HAD CLEARLY TAKEN THE brUNT OF THE PEPPER spray, he came to Sloan’s aid after the ricocheting mist sealed her eyes shut. He helped her into her apartment and turned on the shower. Sloan held her face under a stream of cold water. The man went to the sink while they both groaned and coughed.

“Here,” Sloan said after a few minutes. “Switch. The sink is too small for you. I think I’m good. Or at least better.”

The man happily traded spots and thrust his face under the showerhead, using his fingers to peel his eyelids open. It took thirty minutes before either was able to open their eyes, another thirty before their noses stopped running. Now, an hour after Sloan had pulled the trigger on the pepper spray, she and the man sat at her kitchen table with blood-red eyes, raw cheeks, and sore throats.

The man held a plastic bag filled with ice over his right eye.

“I had no idea you were a police officer,” Sloan said. “I’m really sorry. I thought someone was following me.”

When the man did not answer, Sloan felt the need to explain.

“I saw this truck with Nevada plates . . .” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I’m really sorry. I’m an idiot.”

“No,” the man said. “I’m the idiot. I should have shown my badge right away. Hell, I shouldn’t have followed you in the first place. It’s my Toyota.”

Sloan narrowed her swollen lids.

The man nodded. “I knew you were onto me when you pulled your little NASCAR trick on the highway. I needed to speak with you, so I figured I’d wait at your apartment, but before I had the chance to explain who I was, well . . . like I said, I’m an idiot. Really stupid to follow a woman and then wait for her outside her apartment. Trust me, I got what I deserved. I’m just sorry you got a little bit of it, too.”

Sloan smiled. “The instructions don’t mention ricochets.”

They both shared a laugh.

“What the hell was that? Bear spray?”

“Nope. Just regular old Mace. I bought it online. I guess it works, besides the back-at-you part.”

“I’m a walking testimonial. We had to get pepper sprayed during police training and I don’t remember it being this bad.”

“I’m pretty sure I hit you directly in the eye.”

“Yep, bull’s-eye.”

The man’s other eye was a warm caramel brown that matched his dark hair and tanned skin. He had an athletic build, and it wasn’t hard to imagine him as a police officer.

Sloan lifted the man’s badge.

“Okay, Sheriff Stamos,” she said, reading his name from his ID. “Why were you following me?”

She slid the ID and badge across the table.

“You dropped them when I . . . anyway, I grabbed them when you were rinsing your eyes.”

“Thanks.” He took the badge and hooked it onto his belt, then slipped his ID into his breast pocket. “Eric Stamos. I’m the sheriff of a small town in Nevada called—”

“Cedar Creek,” Sloan said, finishing his sentence.

“Correct.”

“So this is about my online DNA search.”

Eric removed the bag of ice from his eye. “I don’t know anything about an online DNA search. I only know that the FBI showed up to my office a few days ago asking about a cold case involving a family that went missing from Cedar Creek almost thirty years ago. A couple and their daughter. The feds wanted any and all information my department had on the old case because there had been a break in the investigation. They said that the girl, who was an infant at the time of the disappearance, had resurfaced in North Carolina and was going by the name of Sloan Hastings.”

Sloan offered a here-I-am smile. “That would be me. So why did you come all the way from Nevada to track me down?”

“The FBI told me next to nothing. I’m looking for information about the case.”

“So you came all the way to North Carolina for information?”

“I did, and I’d be happy to fill you in on my motives if you’d be willing to share what you know.”

“About what?”

“The missing Margolis family.”

Sloan nodded slowly as she contemplated the sheriff’s quid pro quo offer.

“I don’t know much, but the way this whole thing started was that I did one of those online ancestry searches for a wholly different reason than finding distant relatives. My DNA profile came back indicating that I’m a missing kid from 1995. Once we figured out how big of a deal this whole thing was, my parents . . . my adoptive parents and I called the cops. The cops called the missing persons detectives. The detectives called the FBI. Now, here we are, about a week or so later. My parents are on their third day of interrogations, the FBI is chasing down old case files, and a sheriff from Cedar Creek, Nevada, is sitting in my kitchen.”

Eric cocked his head, took a deep breath, and put the bag of ice back over his face. “That answers a few questions for me.”

“Your turn. Why did you come all the way from Nevada to track me down?”

Eric leaned forward, keeping the ice pressed to the right side of his face. “My father worked the Margolis case when he was sheriff of Harrison County. His name was Sandy Stamos.”

Sloan remembered the name from the articles she had read.

“Your father investigated . . . my disappearance?”

Eric nodded. “He started to, but . . . he died under suspicious circumstances just after you and your parents went missing.”

“What happened?”

“The official line?” Eric sat back in his chair. “My dad was high on heroin, drove his cruiser into Cedar Creek, and drowned.”

“That’s . . . terrible.”

“It’s also complete bullshit. My father was no junkie. Christ, the man never took a sip of alcohol in his life. I don’t believe for a second that he was a heroin user.”

“So . . .” Sloan chose her words carefully. “You think his death was something other than an accident?”

“I think he was killed.”

Eric took the ice away from his face again.

“I think my dad was close to figuring out what happened to Charlotte Margolis and her parents. Someone didn’t want the truth to come out, so they killed him and made it look like a heroin overdose.”

Sloan searched for a question to ask but too many ran through her mind. She finally settled on the most obvious.

“Why do you think that? I mean, do you know something about my birth parents disappearing?”

“No. And until just recently, I never thought much about my father’s death. I was nine years old when he died, and I never really understood any of it at the time. When you lose your dad that young, you sort of tune out the rest of the world. I certainly never explored too carefully how he died, I only knew that my dad was gone. I come from a long line of law enforcement. My father was the sheriff of Harrison County, and my grandfather was sheriff before him. It was my grandfather who started me down this road of looking into my dad’s death. My grandfather never believed the official narrative about what happened to his son.”

“Wasn’t there an autopsy? I’m a pathology fellow and my first thought is that your dad had to have had a postmortem exam.”

“He did.”

“Was there heroin in his system?”

“There was. But I don’t believe any part of that autopsy report.”

“You don’t believe an official autopsy report?”

“Not for a minute.”

“So you think the autopsy was incorrect?”

“I think it was manipulated to show what those in power wanted it to show.”

“Who has the power to do that?”

“The Margolis family. Look, my grandfather was ninety-two years old when he died last year. He had spent nearly thirty years searching for answers about what happened to his son. He never found any. When the end was near and my grandfather knew he wouldn’t be able to keep looking, he told me about his suspicions and gave me everything he’d collected over the years about my father’s death. A lot of that information contains details about my father’s investigation into the missing Margolis family. Just before he passed, my grandfather made me promise to keep looking after he was gone. I’ve been rooting through the case for the last year, and the first clue that’s come along is news that baby Charlotte Margolis turned up alive and well in Raleigh, North Carolina.”

“So you came looking for me.”

“I did.”

Sloan squinted her eyes as a thought dawned on her. “Why drive?” she asked. “Why drive all the way from Nevada just to talk with me?”

“Because airline tickets leave a trail, and it’s important that no one knows I came to find you.”

“Who’d be interested?”

“The Margolis family. And none of them can learn that you and I have met.”