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IT WAS JUST PAST MIDNIGHT WHEN THE WINDOWLESS VAN PULLED DOWN the alley and stopped outside the back door to the Washoe County morgue in Reno. Two men climbed from the van. They wore dark windbreakers that would hide their builds, and ball caps pulled low on their foreheads so that surveillance cameras would have no clear image of their faces. Although they had a master key set if needed, when the first man reached for the handle of the morgue door, it opened with a simple twist. They had an inside man who promised the morgue would be unlocked, and so far he was true to his word.
The men slipped inside, pulled out flashlights, and headed down the hall. They took the stairs to the underground level, their soft-soled tennis shoes making little noise. They found the autopsy suite and headed to a row of coolers on the back wall. They found the third door and opened it, the only one that was unlocked. They pulled the gurney and the body it held from the freezer as cold air billowed into the suite. One of the men pulled on the sheet to reveal the dead man’s feet, found the tag hanging from his toe, and confirmed the name.
Baker Jauncey
To be sure, they pulled the sheet down to expose the man’s face and checked it against a picture they had. Confirmed, they wheeled the body out of the suite and down the hall, this time opting for the elevator rather than the stairs. Back on the first level, they guided the body through the halls, to the unlocked door, and into the night. They opened the back doors of the van and slid Baker Jauncey’s body in. A few minutes later they were on the highway and headed north.
An hour and a half later they arrived in Cedar Creek, where they pulled up to the back door of the town’s morgue. Inside, they pushed the gurney containing Baker Jauncey’s body through the dark hallways until they reached the autopsy suite, where they deposited the body in the cooler. They swapped the Washoe morgue tag that was attached to Baker’s right big toe.
Just before 2 a.m., Baker Jauncey became the property of the Harrison County Medical Examiner’s Office in Cedar Creek, Nevada. The ME promised his boss he would perform the autopsy first thing in the morning.
PART II
Undercover
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 the Post 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 the Post 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.
