Chapter Three
Lucky for Reece she had both women’s cell phone numbers. He called Renae Dennis on Monday, but she was abrupt with him and wouldn’t answer any questions.
Lucky, Opal was more open, but confessed that she didn’t know much about Dory’s personal life.
“Dory was a very secretive person.”
“Did you know that she was pregnant? Nobody seems to know who got her pregnant.”
“My goodness, I didn’t know that. There were several guys who claimed that they were her boyfriend, but she absolutely refused to tell us who she was sleeping with.”
“I knew Dalton was around. She might have been sleeping with him, but he wasn’t her real man. But like I said before she kept that secret well guarded.”
Reece ended the call feeling like he was at a dead end.
He had to go to Lesa again. He felt that information was being withheld from him. He was nowhere nearer solving the case than he was when he started.
***
“I want to know whose child she was carrying. That’s the clue I’m looking for,”he told Lesa as they sat in his office that afternoon.
“So neither Opal nor Renae could give you a clue. I think they know, but they’re afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“They’ll suffer the same fate like Dory.”
“Are you hiding something from me? Why don’t you come clean with me?”
“I’ve told you all I can. I know she was meeting a guy, but she refused to tell me his name.”
Reece knew she was lying. Some vicious killer or killers were out there and these girls were all afraid.
Friday, he took the day off when Rennae Dennis called him.
He wondered what she wanted.
“I want to talk to you. I can’t come to your office. I think I’m being watched.”
Reece had to think fast. Archie Lewis’ place came to mind. Archie was a lawyer and one of those he did investigations for. Archie had an empty office that he had used sometimes with at risk clients
. His place was on Hanover Street, Downtown, Kingston.
“I have somewhere, when can we meet?”
“It’ll have to be after work. Say about five thirty, I leave work at five o’clock.”
Reece gave her the address before ending the call.
***
“I’m putting myself in grave danger by even agreeing to meet you here.”
“You haven’t told me anything that would put you in grave danger.”
“I don’t know if I want to go through with it again.”
Reece knew that he had to be careful lest he scare this young lady and she would shut up and not say anything.
She would be about twenty eight years of age. She was good looking, he thought with a compact body.
“We can’t let Miss Anthony’s murderer go free. At the moment they’re holding a completely innocent man on the murder charge. All the circumstances indicate that he was the murderer, but I know otherwise.”
“Mr. Patterson, I have two young daughters to think about. I don’t want them to get hurt.”
“In my profession, confidentiality is one of our greatest attributes. I have never revealed my sources to anyone.”
She was silent for a few minutes. Reece thought that she was in deep thoughts.
“Dor was in an intense love affair with Gary.”
“Who is Gary?”
“Gareth Garth, that’s Vinny’s son. She was just using Dalton Ferguson. She only had use for him when her car was down or she wanted to go out and Gary wasn’t available.”
Reece was furiously taking notes.
“The autopsy revealed that she was pregnant. Did she say who was responsible?”
“I didn’t know that she was pregnant. She never told me that.”
“Is there anything else you can tell me.”
“I know Dalton, I couldn’t bear to see how Dor was treating him. But he seemed to be okay with it.”
Reece didn’t want to go over the fact that Dalton wanted the girl to be his fiance.
They ended the meeting and Reece called a taxi for her.
He decided to call Lesa again. She told him that she was busy and couldn’t talk to him until later that night. He decided to call her before she left for work on Monday.
Saturday, Reece and Barton attended Dory Anthony’s funeral, Ferguson wasn’t there.
***
“Okay, so she told me that the baby, she was having, was for
Gareth. But he refused paternity and she was threatening to tell his wife about them,” Lesa told Reece over her cell phone.
“So you believe that he had something to do with her death?”
“Based on what I know I think he was responsible in some way or other.”
“He had a motive, but he might have an alibi. Maybe he hired a hitman to do it.”
***
Reece sat thinking. Gareth Garth looked like a hard man.
Based on what industry insiders had told him, Vinny Garth’s business was in serious trouble. Gareth’s father-in-law, Ken Matthews was shoring up Vinny’s failing business. Gareth was married to Ken’s youngest daughter, Ruth-Ann. Ken was a man owning several hardware stores around the island and he was known to be very wealthy with several real estate holdings to boot.
It was possible that Dory was threatening to tell Ruth-Ann about the baby she was having for Gareth. This would put him in trouble with her. So he certainly had a motive to shut her up.
***
Reece’s friends in the used car business had proved useful once again. It was through them that he got the lowdown on Gareth Garth. He had been the shooter in the Midway Night club in Stony Hill shooting. Six persons, two women and four men had been shot that night in June 2010. Gareth had somehow gotten off those charges. There were other incidents with him involved in road rage several times. In each case his father’s influence and money had gotten him off the charges.
As a beat cop in the nineties, he remembered some things about Vinny Garth. He had been drinking in a bar on Princess Street, Downtown, Kingston one night when a group of men attacked him about his political affiliation. Vinny had fired shots, killing one of the men and injuring two others. He got off those charges when he was able to prove self defense.
There was another incident when Vinny had splashed a group of students one evening. The students had stoned his vehicle. By the time he got out of the car they had disappeared except one little boy who had just come on the scene. Vinny had fired shots injuring him. The vehicle had only suffered superficial damages, but again he got off the charges.There were other instances where his high priced lawyers had saved him from doing jail time. It seemed as if Gareth had taken a leaf out of the old man’s book.
Reece called Gareth Garth about a meeting, but the man
refused to meet him. He told Barton about it and he said that he
couldn’t do anything.
The next day Lesa dropped a bombshell on him by announcing that she had a recording of Gareth threatening Dory. He went to meet the girl for the tape when men in a speeding car fired at his car. Reece fired back, but the men escaped. He reached the meeting spot to see police sirens blazing and the area yellow taped. It was then that he realized that it was Lesa! She had been shot and wounded!
A week later he got a call from a girl called Sue Mason. She claimed to be both Dory and Lesa’s friend. She claimed to have a copy of the tape. Reece went and listened to the tape. While he was driving on the street returning from the meeting, two men on separate motorcycles rode up. The men brandished guns. Reece stopped the car and fired at them. He dived out of the car and sprinted to hide behind an empty sidewalk shack.
“He’s hiding behind the shop, Reds. Let’s finish him off.”
“West, remember it’s a policeman we’re dealing with.”
Reece fired several rounds at the two men. Then there was
silence. Then he heard the men cranking up their motor cycles. He put a fresh clip into the gun and let off another barrage at them. Then he heard the roar of the bikes as the two men sped off. He figured that his accurate shooting had scared them away.
***
Reece kept a check on Lesa. He sent her a get well card and flowers. He had been told that it was a shoulder wound.
Monday he went to see Barton and played the tape for
him to hear.
“Let’s go and see Superintendent July at Constant Spring. We don’t play the tape.”
“But what else have we got but the tape?”Barton asked.
July wasn’t convinced that they had a case. What he said he wanted were witnesses. He still believed that Ferguson was the murderer.
Faced with no other alternatives, the two men confronted Vinny Garth and his son with the tape.
“You made up the whole thing, Patterson,”Gareth Garth shouted.
“Take it easy, son. Patterson, you’re accusing my son of murder. All you have is a flimsy tape that for all we know could have been doctored. How much money do you want for it?”
“No deal, Vinny. I have a client staring at the death penalty while the real murderer walks free.”
“Okay, get out of my office both of you.”
“You’ll hear from us, Vinny. This won’t be the last.”
July heard the tape, decided that the police needed to do some more investigation. He was disturbed over the shooting of Lesa Gilbert and the gun attack on Reece. Luck was on Ferguson’s side because in another week a man who was shot in a confrontation with a police party confessed to Dory Anthony’s murder.
Gareth Garth denied having anything to do with her murder. In court the hit man accused Gareth of paying him to kill Dory. However their high priced lawyers were able to prove that the man was a habitual thief, liar and drug addict. Gareth got off the murder charge when the jury returned a not guilty verdict. The End.
Epilogue-Ruth Anne Garth filed for divorce three months after her husband was freed of Dory Anthony’s murder. Ken Matthews decided to stop shoring up Vinny’s failing business. Ruth Anne also complained to her father about the threats she was receiving from her estranged husband. Ken decided to call in the two loans which Vinny owed him.
One late night Vinny and Gareth were at the company when they got into an heated argument and pulled guns on each other. The police had to be called in and both men’s guns were seized.
At the moment Vinny has scaled down his operations considerably after paying off Ken Matthews. Gareth Garth was shot dead one night outside a night club in New Kingston. Speculations are that it was Dory Anthony’s murderer who did him in. It was also rumored that he still owed the man money on that hit job. The police caught the man a few days later.