CHAPTER 16 - Raleigh, North Carolina Friday, July 19, 2024

CHAPTER 16

Raleigh, North Carolina Friday, July 19, 2024

IT WAS 8:30 P.M. BY THE TIME SLOAN LEFT THE PIZZERIA. SHE HAD SAT with Eric for two hours discussing her still-missing biological parents, Sandy Stamos’s mysterious death, and the old, forgotten hit-and-run case that Eric believed was at the heart of Sloan and her parents’ disappearance in 1995. Sloan felt Eric’s desperation as she sat across from him. The man truly believed, after taking on his grandfather’s burden, that Sloan was his only hope of discovering what happened to his father.

Sloan promised Eric she would be in touch, but there were too many variables for her to commit to helping him. She apologized again for the Mace incident, and then watched Sheriff Stamos drive off in his Toyota SUV with Nevada plates. She ran up the steps of her apartment, locked the door behind her, and opened her laptop as soon as she sat at the kitchen table. Her fingers raced across the keyboard as she typed into the search engine:

Eric Stamos Cedar Creek, Nevada.

A slew of information popped onto her screen, and she clicked on the first link. It was an article from the Harrison County Post.

Stamos Wins Reelection in Landslide

CEDAR CREEK, NV, November 9, 2022—Eric Stamos was easily reelected sheriff of Harrison County last night, earning 72 % of the vote. What was originally believed to be a tight race ended up a runaway. The latest polls offered mixed results heading into Tuesday’s election. Most showed Stamos with a narrow lead, while others showed Trent Dilbert as the frontrunner. Dilbert ran an aggressive campaign fueled by massive donations from some of Harrison County’s wealthiest residents. Dilbert was endorsed by several prominent political figures, as well as the District Attorney’s Office. But Stamos and his no-nonsense approach to law enforcement, as well as his family’s long lineage of peacekeepers in the county, resonated with voters more than Dilbert’s pricey campaign.

This will be Stamos’s second term as Harrison County Sheriff. He succeeds his father and grandfather, both of whom served several consecutive terms as sheriff. Stamos’s father, Sanford Stamos, died in 1995. Eric Stamos was just nine years old at the time.

Sloan typed Eric’s father’s name into the search engine and found pages of articles about the man. She clicked again on an article from the Harrison County Post.

Sheriff Stamos Found Dead, Overdose Suspected

CEDAR CREEK, NV, July 15, 1995—Sandy Stamos, the multi-term sheriff of Harrison County, drowned when his car crashed into Cedar Creek sometime late Thursday night. Preliminary toxicology reports from the coroner’s office in Harrison County indicate that Stamos had heroin in his system. Sources close to the investigation tell thePost that a syringe was found in Stamos’s arm when the sheriff’s body was pulled from Cedar Creek.

Stamos was on duty Thursday night and failed to respond to several dispatch calls. A jogger spotted Stamos’s squad car submerged in Cedar Creek early Friday morning with just the rear taillights above the water. Divers were eventually brought in to remove Stamos’s body. The cruiser was pulled from the creek late Friday morning.

The article showed a photo of Sandy Stamos’s squad car as a tow truck hauled it from the water. Sloan clicked through several more articles about Eric’s father. Finally, she searched hit-and-run accident in Cedar Creek, Nevada 1995 and clicked on the first link that came up.

Hit-and-Run Leaves Local Man Dead

CEDAR CREEK, NV, June 26, 1995—Police were called to the scene of a hit-and-run accident on Highway 67, just north of Cedar Creek, in the early morning hours of June 24. The man, identified as Baker Jauncey, was discovered by an out-of-state truck driver making a haul from Boise to Reno.

“I just saw a heap in the middle of the road,” Dale Pickett, the trucker who spotted Jauncey’s body and called 9-1-1, said. “I thought it was a deer or some other large animal until I got closer. Then, I knew it was a body.”

Harrison County Sheriff Sandy Stamos was the first law enforcement officer on the scene. The highway was shut down and the accident investigation unit from the Nevada State Highway Patrol was called in. Sources tell thePost that a car was located close to Baker Jauncey’s body, but neither the Sheriff’s Office nor the Highway Patrol would offer details.

“This is an ongoing investigation,” Sandy Stamos said. “My department, as well as the state authorities, are working tirelessly to determine how this accident happened and the parties involved.”

So far, however, no arrests have been made. Baker Jauncey was a partner at the law firm of Margolis Margolis in Cedar Creek.

Sloan closed her laptop. She could spend all night running down the rabbit holes of Eric Stamos, his father, the mysterious hit-and-run accident, and speculating about what any of it had to do with her disappearance thirty years ago. But she didn’t have time for that now. She still had to see her parents. She’d missed several calls from them while she was at dinner listening to Eric Stamos pitch his wild idea.

She pushed the brooding Cedar Creek sheriff from her thoughts, grabbed her keys, and headed out the door. In just a few short days since submitting her DNA, her world had been turned upside down.

“Where have you been?” her dad asked when Sloan walked through the front door.

“Long story. You first. What happened with the FBI today?”

“They’re finished with the formal questioning,” her dad said. “We told them everything we know—starting with how we adopted you and who we adopted you from. We provided all the paperwork we had. They finished a very deep dive into our backgrounds and, after three days, we’re cleared.”

“Cleared?” Sloan said.

“The FBI is convinced we know nothing about the disappearance of your birth parents.”

“So now what?” Sloan asked.

“They want to speak with you tomorrow morning.”

“What do they need from me? I know less than you or Mom.”

“They want to speak with you about their next moves,” her mother said.

“The agent’s name is John Michaels,” her dad said. “Nice guy.”

“Did they say how they would investigate this?”

“I think that’s what they’re going to discuss with you tomorrow morning. Are you going to tell us where you’ve been?”

Sloan considered telling her parents about her visit from Eric Stamos but thought better of it.

“A body turned up in the morgue,” Sloan said. “I’m in the middle of dealing with it.”

She didn’t mention that it wasn’t her morgue, or that the body was from 1995. Sloan considered the omission less deceitful than a full-blown lie. Back at her apartment, she spent the small hours of the night on her laptop, reading about Eric Stamos, his dead father, and the Margolis family of Cedar Creek.