CHAPTER 11

"The Chief will see you now, Mr. Houston." Matt was ushered back down a hallway at the Boulder City Police Department and shown into the office of Chief Ray Orbach who stood and shook hands with the private investigator.

"Nice to meet you. Have a seat, Mr. Houston." The chief sat down and steepled his fingers. "Agent Bateaux told me that you would be paying us a visit."

"Yes sir, I had intended to be here yesterday but I got caught up behind an accident."

Nodding, the chief shook his head. "Yesterday was tough. Five people were killed in that mess."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"But that isn't why you're here, is it?" Orbach handed over a folder to Matt.

"Thanks." He took it and read through, thinking to himself once again that it was a carbon copy of what he had already seen. After quickly going through it he looked up at the chief. "Did Dennis Oglesby have a record?"

"No, he didn't. As a matter of fact he had moved here about two weeks before he went missing. His wife filed the missing person's report after the twenty four hour waiting period. She stayed here for a couple of years and then moved back to Georgia."

"And I see here that she was ruled out as a suspect." The report had stated that Marissa Oglesby had witnesses as to her whereabouts for the time in question.

"She was." Matt sighed and nodded. "It looks like you've been dealt a bad hand, Mr. Houston. We ran down every lead we had on this case and they were scarce as hen's teeth. There just wasn't anywhere to go on it. It's a wonder the body was found at all. He was out at the end of Utah Street." He got up and moved over to the map behind his desk and Matt joined him and looked at the area. Once again, as they had found in most of the cases, it was an area that didn't receive much traffic at all. A dead end in the desert, there wouldn't be much reason for anyone to go there.

Matt handed the folder back. "Chief, I sure appreciate your time." They shook hands again and Matt left, headed towards Vegas. Something kept nagging at him as he drove along Highway 93, and then it hit him: Oglesby's body had been in bad shape. Like the others that he had been investigating, the body was missing one bone, but he had been found more recently than some of the bodies that were in good shape and hadn't been dead as long as they had – plus there had been obvious scavenger damage. Matt was convinced that Oglesby's death was not tied into the others that he was investigating.

The trip was over in half an hour and Matt headed to the headquarters of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. After a short wait, he was met by Det. Marsha Hites. "Mr. Houston?" She smiled and held out her hand. "Marsha Hites. It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Thanks. This is quite a place y'all have here." He followed her to the elevator and they rode up to the offices of the Homicide Section.

"The Lieutenant is waiting for us." She led him back to an office at the back of the squad room and knocked on the door.

"Yeah, come in."

She and Matt stepped inside the office of Lt. Mario Patrillo. Matt did a double take when the man turned around. He was the spitting image of Vince Novelli with the addition of a moustache. The man noticed his shocked expression. "Is something wrong?"

Matt stuttered for a minute and then chuckled and pulled out his phone. "Sorry, I'm not really crazy…" He held out the phone with a picture of Vince on it. "You look like my best friend…who used to be a lieutenant with the LAPD."

"Wow!" Patrillo laughed. "He's a pretty good looking guy." He chuckled again as Matt showed the picture to Det. Hites.

"You aren't related to any Novellis by any chance are you?" Matt couldn't get over the resemblance.

"Not that I know of but I'll be sure to ask my mother."

"Please tell me her name isn't Rosa…" Matt looked at the cop.

"How did you know?" The PI started laughing again. "Don't tell me his mom is a Rosa, too?"

Matt tried to recover. "Uh huh…" He pulled up a picture of Mama Novelli and handed over the phone.

"Holy cow…they kinda look alike. Okay, that's just weird." He chuckled. "Please have a seat."

Sitting in the offered chair, Matt took the folder that Patrillo handed him and read through it. Monica Sturgess had been picked up numerous times for soliciting and had been living with a boyfriend at the time of her disappearance. She had been reported as missing and DNA had been the only way to identify her. From the best estimations of the ME, she had been dead about three years. The only bone that was missing from her body was the L-5 – the fifth lumbar vertebra. Matt closed the folder and thought for a minute. "Where was she found exactly?"

Patrillo waved him over to a map on the wall. "Right here – by a group of hikers." He tapped on the map. The area was to the east of the city, just off of East Lake Mead Boulevard. Matt looked. That was the only road through the area. "Now here's a little something that you might find interesting." The lieutenant picked up another folder and handed it to the private eye.

Matt opened it up and starting reading about the homicide of Logan Branchfield, age 39, a tow truck driver who had been found shot to death two years earlier along that same stretch of roadway. "Uh huh…" He continued reading. Branchfield's wife said that he had received a call at 2:30 in the morning on June fifteenth of that year and that was the last time she saw him alive. The call had been made from a disposable cell phone and couldn't be traced. "That sounds like more than a coincidence." He walked back over to the map. "I bet he got stuck." Tapping on the map he explained. "See, I think this guy is driving something big – a semi, a camper – something along that line. But nobody has been finding tracks near the bodies. I think he's been lowering the mud flaps somehow and erasing his tracks."

The lieutenant nodded. "That could be done I guess. Do you want to go out there?"

"Yes sir, I do." The three went down to the parking garage and got into the lieutenant's SUV and headed that way. "I'm also supposed to be meeting with a Det. Parker in North Las Vegas."

Det. Hites spoke up. "Rick Parker?"

"Yes ma'am."

She smiled. "We went to the academy together. He's a good guy."

They chatted and arrived at the scene a short time later. Climbing out of the truck, Matt adjusted the LAPD ball cap on his head and followed Patrillo out to the spot. "This is it right here." The PI looked back toward the area where they had parked. Between the road and the spot where they now stood there was a bit of a wash. If someone was unfamiliar with the area and was there for the very first time under nighttime conditions they could easily become stuck – no matter what they were driving. He looked at the area where they stood: nothing there indicated any reason why the spot would have been visited by anyone other than a hiker – unless someone was up to no good and needed to stash a body. Turning back toward the road, the PI headed toward the wash. Hites and Patrillo followed suit. Once there, Matt started travelling down the wash and then suddenly stopped when he was about twenty yards from where he had first entered it.

"Bingo." He knelt down as the other two detectives joined him. He indicated what looked like a series of marks on the stone at the northern edge of the wash – toward the road. "It looks like somebody scraped metal across here." Pulling out his phone, he took pictures from every angle and then pulled a small tape measure out of his pocket. "Hold that right there on that mark." He handed the end to Patrillo and moved down to where the next mark was. "Right at 72 inches…" Patrillo turned loose of the tape and Matt wound it up and put it back in his pocket. "I think he's got an RV."