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CHAPTER 74

Bend, Oregon Thursday, August 15, 2024

NEARLY TWO WEEKS AFTER HER HARROWING ORDEAL AT MARGOLIS Manor, Sloan was back in Oregon. The FBI had summoned her. For the past ten days, since Agent John Michaels and his task force had reviewed the photos Sloan and Nora discovered on Annabelle Margolis’s camera that told the story of the night she and Preston disappeared, the FBI had used ground penetrating radar to explore the property around the winery. The day before, they zeroed in on three specific locations where the ultrasound showed foreign objects deep underground. Experts were brought in to confirm that the soil had been disturbed and relaid years before. Knowing Ellis Margolis had access to earth-moving equipment stored on the property suggested that the bodies had been buried deep in the ground. Cadaver dogs were brought to each of the three sites and offered a positive response to one of them. Excavation was underway.

Agent Michaels met Sloan at the front gates and escorted her in a golf cart to the digging site far out among the cabernet vines. The area was cordoned off by yellow crime scene tape. Backhoes and front loaders roared as their hydraulic arms clawed into the earth and lifted massive amounts of soil to deposit into waiting dump trucks that beeped when they reversed out of the area.

Agent Michaels pulled up to the site and Sloan exited the cart. Crews of agents stood by while others watched a large monitor powered by a gas generator that told the operators of the earth-moving machines how deep to dig.

“That’s it,” one of the agents yelled as the front loader lifted its final bucketful of soil from the deep hole in the ground.

The agent came over to Michaels.

“We’re at about three feet away. We’ve gotta go by hand now.”

A ladder was lowered into the hole, which was eight feet deep, and three agents scaled down. Once they were in the hole, other agents tossed shovels down and the digging continued.

“How did you find this specific location?” Sloan asked Agent Michaels. She looked out at the vast property that went on for thousands of acres.

“We had a team of a hundred agents walk the grounds with radar looking for anything under the ground. Got a bunch of hits but narrowed them down to a couple. Then we brought in the experts and the sonar. They were able to distinguish the objects underground that were of interest versus the nonsense. Once we had a few specific locations that looked promising, we shot hydraulic piers down to the foreign objects and then brought them back up. Cadaver dogs sniffed the piers to let us know if we were on the right track. The dogs went crazy in this location.”

Agent Michaels paused.

“We’re pretty sure this is it.”

Thirty minutes later one of the agents yelled.

“Got something down here, doc.”

The FBI’s forensic anthropologist climbed down the ladder and Sloan watched as the man knelt in the hole and worked diligently. Finally, one of the agents who’d completed the final dig climbed up the ladder and approached Michaels.

“Sir, they’re bones. The doc confirmed they’re human remains.”

Agent Michaels looked up, exhaled a lungful of air, and placed a hand on Sloan’s shoulder.

“It took nearly thirty years,” Sloan said. “But we found them.”

Agent Michaels turned to Sloan. “You found them.”