The Education of Giacomo Jones Ch. 04

Rance was calmer now. He sensed it wasn't Blanding who had dropped the ball and that he was the aggrieved party, someone whose job just got harder because somebody wanted to tip off the press.

"Do you think I'm safe? I mean there are plenty of pictures of Gia and me together on social media, particularly at the tailgate after the South Carolina game," he said. "Wouldn't be hard for this snake to figure out who I am and how to get to me."

"We've got your back covered, Rance. I can tell you that right now you're sitting in your vehicle, Tennessee license 2RZ-5021, talking on your phone just outside your apartment. That help you out a little bit?" Blanding said.

Rance was turning around in his car seat looking everywhere for prying eyes behind shrubs or trees, behind the steering wheel of an unfamiliar car, but saw nothing.

"Um... yes... yessir, it does," he said.

"We've updated Coach Hemphill and informed him that we're going to have uniformed officers that people will notice and others that you won't know are officers in and around the facility and at practice. I don't want your coach thinking someone who looks out of place is a spy from LSU and trying to run them off. They're ours," he said.

Rance thanked the captain and hung up. Seconds later, the phone buzzed again, and this time it was his dad.

"Jesus, Rance...," Ed Martin stammered. He had just been briefed on the case by his old Vandy Law classmate who was the deputy U.S. attorney, and what he was told shook him to his core.

"They believe this guy is not only hell-bent on killing Gia but probably you, too. The FBI's been reviewing interviews with the kids in the New Jersey juvey prison who knew him and they're very alarmed about what they've learned. They rank him as one of the most dangerous sociopathic, schizophrenic personalities of that age that they've ever analyzed. There's no limit to the number of people he would kill without as much as batting an eye."

"Son, I'd like for you to come home until they apprehend this guy," Ed Martin said. "And bring Gia with you if the cops will let you."

"Dad, I just got off the phone with the officer leading the South Carolina response to this and I don't think that would be a very good idea. I'm also a little leery of the feds, too. It appears someone at the feds leaked this to reporters in Columbia because it's all over TV this morning."

Rance explained the overnight discovery of the North Carolina couple and the discovery of their truck near Fallstrom. He also said that while Gia's name hasn't surfaced in the reporting yet, the cops are confident that it will soon, turning this into a national story.

"So I don't think leaving Fallstrom where we've got extensive visible and covert police protection is a good idea right now," he said, telling his father how Blanding knew his exact whereabouts in real time when he called him moments earlier.

Then a troubling idea occurred to Rance.

"Dad, how much did you tell this federal prosecutor about me, my relationship with Gia and how that figures into this?"

"I told him that this guy might be looking for Gia and that she was your girlfriend," Ed Martin said.

"OK. Let's see where this goes from here," Rance said as a text from Gia triggered his phone's harp alert. "Gotta go, dad. Thanks."

Gia's text was frantic and to the point: ITS ON TV! HES IN TOWN! WE R FUCKED! Rather than reply, he called her.

"Baby, I am blowing off class today and you should do the same. I am going to call Coach Hemp and fill him in and tell him I may have to miss practice. And I am on my way over to see you. Stay put, OK?"

In the background over Gia's phone, he could hear Callie Jones freaking out, wailing one moment, frantically yammering in Italian the next. He could hear Gia's shuddering as she spoke.

"OK. I need you right now," she said softly. "Please hurry."

Perry Hemphill already knew the background. He didn't know yet that the media knew about Geno Millions and the murdered couple's truck being found near town. He agreed that Rance should avoid class for the time being and said the athletic department's academic counselors would call his professors and explain things as best they could. If he and the cops believed he should stay away from practice, that would be OK, too.

Rance passed by three parked state police cruisers on the short drive to the Honors College dorm from his apartment. One was on the street near the parking lot. There were a couple of sedans with Virginia tags and odd antennas that no college kid would drive on the periphery of the parking lot. There was a trim woman in her 30s wearing a blue blazer and an earpiece behind the college reception desk that was almost always unstaffed. She eyed Rance warily, spoke something quietly into her thumb, and then nodded at Rance. Gia's door was open and she was waiting. She ran to him and clasped his neck tightly, almost desperately.

"I'm terrified, Rance. This could go really bad in any number of ways," she said

She took him into her studio where Callie Jones sat on the love seat clutching her rosary and whispering to herself with her eyes closed.

"I think this is the safest place we can be right now," Rance said. "They've got this blanketed." He told her what Blanding had said about the governor himself taking an interest in the case, about how he suspected someone at the federal level leaked the story to the press and how Blanding told him exactly where he was sitting while he was talking to him.

"And besides," he told Gia, "that wormy little shit has to get by me to get to you."

It was not yet 10 a.m. on the longest day of their lives, and Gia and Rance sat together on the bed with Gia's mother seated in front of them on the love seat watching the TV for updates. Praying the rosary seemed to soothe Callie. She reclined on the seat and dozed off. Rance used the moment of quiet to gently, slowly kiss Gia. And then they fell asleep themselves, seated on the bed and leaning against each other, with CNN playing on the television.

●●●

The knock on the door of Apartment 31C at Palmetto Estates Village came faster than he expected.

"Pizza Don's delivery," a voice called from the other side of the door. A thin, hollow-eyed young man with a shaved head, baggy shorts and a disheveled t-shirt opened the door.

"Medium pepperoni, extra cheese thin crust for..." the delivery guy checked his ticket, "... Miller Haddon?"

"Sure, come on in," the apartment's occupant said.

"That'll be $17.45 with tax," he said, taking the hot pizza out of its protective sleeve and putting it on the only corner of the table not cluttered with papers.

It happened fast. A rag soaked with a bitter, volatile liquid with powerful fumes was pressed hard over the pizza delivery guy's mouth and nose. In his momentary panic, he inhaled the chloroform even more deeply, and consciousness slipped from him in just seconds.

Geno Millions quickly stripped his victim, 18-year-old Billy Marchbanks, of his Pizza Bob's logo shirt and his hat. Then he dragged him into the bathroom, stacked his unconscious form over the fresh corpse of Miller Haddon, the apartment's tenant, in the bathtub and plunged his switchblade into Billy's naked chest half a dozen times.

Gennaro Millientello put the pizza back in the sleeve that keeps it hot and, now wearing the requisite uniform of a Pizza Don's delivery worker, he took the pizza with him back to the old Ford Fusion with the Pizza Don's light on the roof, sorted through Billy Marchbanks' keys and found the one bearing the blue Ford oval and cranked the car.

Geno decided to start at the most conspicuous landmark at Fulbright, the football stadium and the surrounding athletics complex. Maybe Gia would be coming or going from there. But the sight of a police cruiser in the parking lot persuaded him to turn around.

The only other bit of information he had was that she was an honors student, so he spotted two Fulbright students waiting at the crosswalk of an intersection for the light to change when he rolled down a window.

"Excuse me, I'm new here and I have a pizza to deliver where all the really smart students live, and I can't find it," he said. "Can you help me out?"

The young men looked at each other confused. "Where smart students live? What? Don't we look smart?"

"Well, I'm not that smart, so I can't help you," one of the students, wearing a Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity t-shirt said.

"You think he means the Honors College?" the shorter of the two said.

"Yeah, that sounds like it," Geno said. "How would I get there?"

The two students gave him directions and told him it would take about five minutes, but to mind the 15-mile-per-hour speed limit "because these campus cops are real assholes about pulling people over for just going a mile or two over the limit."

Geno Millions, his teeth gritting in anger from the wise-ass remark from one of the two frat boys on the corner whom he would have gladly sliced to bloody ribbons if it wouldn't compromise his mission, nodded at the helpful advice about not attracting unwanted law enforcement attention. "I'll keep that in mind," he said as he drove off.

The Ford Fusion pulled slowly into the Honors College Residence Hall parking lot. Geno considered parking in a distant corner, but what pizza delivery guy would do that? They would park as close as possible. So he pulled just beyond the awning that led to the front entrance, parked the car, picked up the pizza and walked inside as confidently as he could.

"Can I help you," a trim blonde woman asked him.

"Um... yeah, I have a medium pepperoni for a... Giacomo Jones. You got anyone here by that name?" he said.

"Let me check, sir. Why don't you wait over there on the sofa," the smiling woman said.

Something about her made Geno instantly nervous. Maybe it was the way she was just a little too neatly dressed. Maybe it was that she seemed unusually fit and trim and mature for a woman with such a lackluster job as running the front desk at a college dorm. Maybe it was the way she quickly sized him up the second she saw him and seemed a bit tense about it. But, careful not to arouse too much suspicion, Geno did as she asked and perched on the edge of the sofa with the pizza on a round glass table in front of it.

The woman was on the telephone talking in a hushed tone, her body turned to shield her lips from possibly being read. She looked over her shoulder a time or two at Geno in his Pizza Don's garb. Now she hung up, smiled across the spacious lobby from behind the counter and said, "Someone will be right out to help you."

Geno Millions nodded without smiling. His eyes darted nervously around the lobby - its terrazzo floors and a few patches of green and gold carpet covering seating areas like his. He noted the exits - the one behind him toward the parking the lot and the one in front of him slightly off to his right leading down a hallway toward - what? Vending machines? Restrooms? Elevators? Giacamo Jones's room.

Half a mile across campus, the radio receiver on the lapel of Charlie Blanding's South Carolina State Police uniform crackled, and he stopped dead in his tracks as he left the campus police headquarters. It was the voice of Sandrine Corder, an agent from the FBI's Behavioral Sciences Unit in Quantico, Virginia. Her home is less than two miles from the shopping center where Geno Millions was suspected of killing a motorist in a carjacking a couple of days earlier. She was the blonde woman posing as the resident adviser at the desk at the Honors College lobby. Her voice was unnaturally low, struggling to be unobtrusive, yet filled with urgent tension.

"Possible subject match in the lobby in pizza delivery uniform. Repeat, possible subject match in Honors College lobby in pizza uniform," she said.

Captain Blanding sprinted to his marked Ford Taurus cruiser, cranked its powerful V-8 special edition engine and squealed his tires racing toward the Honors College, its blue strobes pulsing but his siren off so as not to possibly provoke the notoriously volatile and violent Geno Millions.

No sooner had Sandrine Corder's words cleared than a dispatch from the SCSP district headquarters came in for all units: Landlord reports two possible stabbing fatalities at Palmetto Estates Village off County Route 401 in Fallstrom. EMS en route, sheriff's and Fallstrom police arriving on-scene.

The dispatch continued: Also all points be on the lookout for 2007 Ford Fusion, light blue, South Carolina tags X-ray, Bravo, Foxtrot - two-zero-four Charlie. And then the rest made Blanding's blood run cold. Vehicle has Pizza Don's signage and was last reported making a delivery to Palmetto Estates Village.

Just two blocks away, Blanding floored the accelerator and took the last two corners on two wheels before killing the cruiser's lights as he parked just outside the Honors College parking lot. He unholstered his 9 mm Glock service weapon and sprinted to a spot flat along the front wall of the building next to a university police officer who had been just outside. He could hear the roar of other police vehicle engines approaching fast, mercifully with their sirens muted. None pulled into the parking lot for fear of spooking what was likely Geno Millions inside.

Sandrine Corder smiled again at the fidgeting young man with the hot pizza still in its protective delivery sleeve seated in the chair about 20 feet away. "Miss Jones will be down to see you in just a few minutes," she said.

Corder was buying time for officers to pour into the building from a rear fire access door and for a plain-clothes agent dressed in sweats to emerge from the hallway in front of Geno Millions and speak to him. That would be the cue for agent Corder to unholster the 9 mm concealed beneath her blazer and train its bead on Geno Millions' body mass.

Just before all that happened, Geno bolted from his seat and scrambled wildly through the portal into the hallway in front of him leading into the bowels of the Honors College.

"Halt!" agent Corder screamed to no avail. Geno had made it almost through the doorway before she could level her weapon, depriving her of a clean shot.

"ALL UNITS! ALL UNITS! SUSPECT HAS RUN FROM THE LOBBY AREA! ENTER THE PREMISES NOW FROM ALL DIRECTIONS. REPEAT, SUSPECT IS LOOSE IN THE RESIDENCE HALL!"

Instantly, sirens from approaching cars that had been silent barked to life. The parking lot instantly filled with marked and unmarked sedans and SUVs. Officers poured into every door leading into the Honors College.

Gia's phone rang. The caller ID read only "EMERGENCY." She answered.

"Lock your door NOW. The subject is loose in your building."

Rance Martin could hear the desperate voice on the other end in one fast, agile move, he slammed against the door and bolted it, then stood with his back against it.

Outside, Gia, Rance and Callie could hear people running, police radios crackling, officers yelling in frantic tones. It sounded chaotic, and they silently prayed that there was order to the madness.

Then, in the distance, they heard a woman screaming.

Sandrine Corder was the first to see that a young woman who had been walking back from the residence hall laundry in the basement now had Geno Millions' elbow locked around her throat and the point of a long dagger pressed into her neck near her carotid artery almost to the point of piercing her skin.

As soon as Corder got a bead on Geno's face, he concealed it behind hers and pulled the terrified young woman around a corner into an alcove filled with three vending machines. He pulled her back firmly against him, his own back pressed hard against a Dr. Pepper machine.

"Cop, if you take one step closer I slit this cunt's throat. Don't even let me see your fucking shadow," he yelled.

"Gennaro, nobody needs to get hurt. There's been enough of that. We can all come out of this unharmed if..."

"Shut... the fuck... UP!" he bellowed. "Nobody calls me Gennaro. Nobody. Got it?"

"OK, sorry. Geno. But what I said still stands; no one needs to get hurt here," Sandrine Corder said.

"Just get out of this hallway now or I waste this bitch," he bellowed.

"I can't just walk away, Geno. You know it doesn't work like that. You and I have to be able to communicate. But I will keep my distance. Now why don't you ease up a little with that knife to make sure there's no mistake, OK? And let us hear from her that she's still all right. Then we can establish some trust."

"Talk to them," Geno growled at his captive.

"Please, God! Help me... ," the young woman sobbed.

"There. You heard from her. Now here's what you're going to do for me. You're going to bring Giacomo Jones down here so I can talk to her. We go back a long ways, GiGi and me," he said with an oily sneer.

"We can't do that Geno, and you know that. We can't give you the opportunity to harm two women," agent Corder said.

"Well, that's the only way this yummy little piece of ass doesn't leave here in a body bag, bitch, so you might want to rethink that," he said.

"That's not a decision I can make, Geno. And you're smart enough to know that you hurt your hostage and we blow you away right here," Corder said. "Give me a few minutes."

"You got three minutes or I start cutting pieces off miss college twat here and tossing them into the hall, starting with these plump titties," Geno said, drawing a terrified shriek from the young woman still locked in his thin but uncommonly strong right arm, the sour stench of his unwashed body making her stomach turn.

By then, at least a half-dozen uniformed officers - two in black fatigues and armed with sniper rifles - had quietly walked within four feet of agent Corder.

She looked around at them and signaled for one to quietly take her place closest to the corner beyond which Geno held his hostage.

"Copy that, Geno. I will do what I can," agent Corder said.

The compressor that chills the cans of soft drinks in the vending machine against which Geno and his captive were pressed kicked on and its hum helped stifle the soft movements of the heavily armed officers who had inched forward. Out in the lobby, the FBI agent who had met with Gia and Calvita Jones and Rance Martin the night before had opened up a cell phone line with the bureau's Behavioral Unit in Quantico, Virginia. On the line was Quinton DeVore, one of the nation's top hostage negotiators, who was already communicating directly with Sandrine Corder through her earpiece.

"Agent Corder, I am afraid from what I have been able to hear, you are going to have to carry out this negotiation because you're the one who established communication and you have no time to spare because this guy's proved he will kill and he's got nothing to lose," DeVore told the woman now serving as the law enforcement point person in dealing with a murderous sociopath holding a hostage at knifepoint.

"This woman, Miss Jones, the one he's obsessed with, do you have enough agents to protect her if she comes within earshot of this guy?" DeVore asked.

"Mr. DeVore, we got enough infantry here to take over a small country, but we don't actually have eyes on the subject and getting someone beyond the blind corner he's using as cover risks getting his hostage killed," the FBI agent said.

"Then I think getting Miss Jones down there but out of his reach is what we have to do to establish some trust with Millientello. Can you do that?"

Captain Blanding looked at agents Deason and Corder. "Give me a minute."

Blanding phoned Gia as he ran toward her room. She answered on the first ring.

"Miss Jones, it's Captain Blanding. I will be at your door in 10 seconds. I'll knock three times. When I do, let me in."