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“The official report stated that my father was under the influence of heroin, lost control of his car, drove into Cedar Creek, and drowned.”
“Your father didn’t drown, Sheriff. That much is certain.” Sloan saw Eric squint his eyes and swallow hard at the revelation. She reached over and put her hand on his forearm.
“How do you know that?” Eric finally asked.
“Because there was no water in his lungs. If his body was found submerged in water, and he was still breathing at the time, there would be water in his lungs. The sad reality of drowning deaths is that victims hold their breaths for as long as possible. Eventually, however, they inhale. And when they do, water is ingested into their lungs. The lack of water in your father’s lungs means he never inhaled after he was under the water.”
“There was a theory,” Eric said, “that he had been breathing from an air pocket that was trapped in the car. Isn’t that possible?”
“I’m afraid not,” Dr. Cutty said. “If he had been trapped in a vehicle that was submerged under water and breathing from an air pocket, there would have been evidence of carbon dioxide intoxication and subsequent suffocation. It’s called confined space hypoxic syndrome. Sloan will know all about that.”
Sloan looked at Eric and spoke.
“If your dad had taken his last breaths while trapped in his submerged squad car and breathing from an air pocket, eventually the air pocket would have filled with the carbon dioxide he exhaled. Once all the oxygen in the air pocket was depleted, he would have suffocated. And when this happens, there are clear signs of it on autopsy, including hypercapnia and respiratory acidosis. Basically, his bloodstream would have been saturated with carbon dioxide, and his lungs would have filled with frothy blood that’s classic in carbon dioxide poisoning.”
Sloan looked back to Dr. Cutty. “I’m assuming the lungs were clean?”
“Correct,” Dr. Cutty said. “And there was no exaggerated amount of carbon dioxide in the bloodstream.”
Sloan saw that Eric was struggling with the information and she kept her hand on his forearm.
“So what does it mean?” he finally asked.
“It means the last breath your father took was a regular one, from air filled with a normal mixture of oxygen. It means your father was already dead when his car went into the water. At least, he had died before the water submerged him.”
“What killed him? How did he die?”
“A massive amount of heroin,” Dr. Cutty said. “So massive, in fact, that it’s impossible he injected it himself.”
Dr. Cutty shuffled a few papers as she looked through her notes.
“Based on the metabolized heroin in his system, it appears the drug was administered in two doses. The problem is that the first dose was so large it would have rendered your father comatose. Unconscious, at least. The second dose killed him. So my question, Sheriff, is this: If the first dose rendered your father unconscious, how did the second dose get into his bloodstream? Because he certainly didn’t inject it himself.”
CHAPTER 36
Cedar Creek, Nevada Wednesday, July 31, 2024
SLOAN STOOD IN THE BACKYARD OF ERIC’S CABIN WITH THE PEAKS OF the Sierra Nevada Mountains staring down at her. The revelation that Annabelle’s blood had been discovered in her home, and what it meant for her birth mother’s fate, had rattled her. The information Dr. Cutty had delivered about Sandy Stamos’s cause of death had turned Eric’s world upside down. There was some part of him, Sloan now understood, that had been skeptical of the stories his ailing grandfather told before he passed. They were tales of corruption and cover-ups that involved his father having discovered something sinister enough during his investigation into Baker Jauncey and the missing Margolis family that it led to his death. Eric had been chasing answers to satisfy the wishes of his dead grandfather. But now, with Dr. Cutty’s interpretation of Sandy Stamos’s autopsy, it was clear that Eric’s grandfather’s decades-long search into his son’s death had not been a dying man chasing a conspiracy theory.
They both needed to clear their minds and settle their nerves. When Sloan mentioned a workout—the usual way she recharged her brain—Eric showed her his backyard. He had erected a CrossFit course complete with a torque sled, battle ropes, pull-up bar, kettlebells, and free weights. Just the sight of the equipment allowed Sloan’s mind to drift from Annabelle Margolis’s likely fate.
Wearing shorts and a tank top she had in her car, Sloan approached the giant tractor tire that rested in the middle of Eric’s backyard. The sun was high in the cloudless sky and on a westward pitch that cast the Sierra Nevada Mountains in a bright amber glow. She crouched into a squat, reached her hands under the edge of the tire, and engaged her quads and glutes as she flipped the tire over. It landed a few feet away and Sloan jogged back to it, squatted again, and repeated the process—lift, pull, push, lift, pull, push—until she completed twenty-five reps. Once she finished, Eric attacked the tire. Sloan jumped rope to keep her heart rate up while Eric completed his reps. Her watch beeped just as Eric finished the last rotation. Sloan hustled over to the tire, and they swapped spots.
After fifteen minutes they were both breathing heavily and unable to talk. Eric pointed to the battle ropes—two thick cords, each twenty feet long and secured to eyelets screwed into the ground. Sloan grabbed the free end of each rope and began swinging in an up-and-down motion—right arm up, left arm down, zigzagging the ropes for two straight minutes until her shoulders burned and her chest heaved. Eric took over as Sloan recovered. They took turns, back and forth on the battle ropes in two-minute rounds until they completed ten reps and collapsed onto the ground.
They gulped from water bottles before heading to the kettlebells to complete a killer circuit of snatches and cleans. When they finished, they walked around the yard with hands on their heads and heaving for breath.
“I see you handle stress about as well as I do,” Sloan said.
“It’s either this or the bottle,” Eric said. “And this is a lot healthier.”
Eric had sweated through his shirt so that the fabric stuck to his skin, revealing the sculptured physique of his shoulders and chest.
“I take it you’re not a drinker either?” Eric asked.
“Only Diet Dr. Pepper and the occasional glass of wine. Otherwise, I burn off my anxiety at the gym. Thanks for letting me crash what I assume is usually a one-man show.”
“Are you kidding? This was great. You pushed me harder than I would have pushed myself. And it got my mind off of what your boss told me about my dad.”
