The Education of Giacomo Jones Ch. 06

The president cancelled the rest of his appointments for the day. Other people were conferenced into the call including the district attorney, the U.S. attorney for South Carolina and the state's commissioner of public safety, all on the precondition of confidentiality.

Over the course of the two-hour call, after receiving commitments to keep her role guarded, Gia agreed to wear a wire and carry the special purse rigged with four small video cameras that provided police in a nearby van a live, 360-degree view of what was happening in Haines's apartment. Her guidance was to allow him to make as many clearly incriminating statements and actions as possible before she felt her safety was imperiled and then signal to waiting SWAT and special victims units to enter and take Haines down. The code word was "Rescue!" shouted loudly. Kicking in Haines' door hadn't been part of the plan, but after he deadbolted it, the police had no choice.

The same State Police technician who had taped the wireless mic and transmitter beneath Gia's clothing now peeled away the tape holding it in place. After that, the unmarked black State Police Chevy Suburban in which Gia had been kept out of sight pulled away and drove to the President's residence and stopped a few feet behind Rance's gold Jeep Wagoneer.

Shortly after he received Gia's last text late that afternoon, Rance got a cryptic and concerning text from Coach Hemphill instructing him to go to Overshaw's residence at 8 o'clock. There was no explanation other than Gia was safe, that she would meet him there and not speak a word of it to anyone.

When Rance arrived, Overshaw took him into his study, closed the door and explained, in broad terms, what was going down at that very moment on the other side of campus at Edelbert Haines's apartment. Gia had an army of police ready to pounce to protect her and had agreed to help law enforcement in their longstanding effort to catch, convict and imprison Haines for the countless women he had raped over the years. By law enforcement estimates, he would victimize two to three of his female students each semester. Some gave in. Some refused and suffered the consequences. Until tonight, he had gotten away with it.

"He's been here 28 years, so ... well, you can do the math," Overshaw said. "Gia's the first who would fight back and help us. She's the most courageous woman I think I've ever met."

Rance sat mute, stunned. For a second time in this one semester, criminal trouble had sought out the woman he loved and, for the second time, she responded by offering herself as human bait to make other women safer. But he was not happy that this had fallen to Gia, though she had agreed to take on the role.

When she arrived, Rance bolted from the president's study, out the front door and wrapped Gia in his arms as soon as she got out of the police vehicle.

"Kids, this is anything but an ordinary night. I don't for a minute want to minimize what you've been through, but when the police are through taking their statements inside from Gia here in about half an hour, I need for you to go back and do what you'd normally do on a Tuesday night as if none of this happened," Overshaw said.

Captain Blanding pulled up in an unmarked sedan and immediately brightened as he entered Overshaw's residence and saw Rance.

"Mr. Martin. We meet under the strangest circumstances. Glad to see you two are still together but I hate that she can't just be a regular student," the officer said as he shook Rance's hand. "Congratulations on making All-SEC and Academic All-SEC, by the way."

"Gia's overdue for a break, and I appreciate that y'all were there in big numbers to take care of her and arrest that creep. I'm grateful it was guys with badges because you have to look out for his rights. If I'd found out first, you'd still be finding pieces of that pervert all over his house and I'd be locked up for murder."

Lieutenant Blanding nodded his head sympathetically. "I hear ya, Rance. But that's why it's best to let the police do police work and you take care of this young lady and win ball games."

Gia spent 90 minutes with Lieutenant Blanding, a State Police Special Victims Unit officer and deputies from the state district attorney's and U.S. attorney's offices being debriefed about what went down in Edelbert Haines's apartment. Rance sat in the living area with president Overshaw.

"Rance, I know it's difficult on you two, and I am so grateful to my wife for talking to Gia when she did this afternoon, for recognizing what was going on, for leading her to my office and allowing us to rid the university and society of that guy," Overshaw said.

"I want you to know how grateful I am — that this university is — for the extraordinary assistance you and Gia have been this year, and I also want you to know that you've earned the best Fulbright has to give," he said. "Any time you or Gia need anything from us, let Vangie or me know. Call my direct line. I mean that."

"Can you see to it that none of what just happened in any way affects her standing at graduation next month, that there's no asterisk or anything on her academic record, that her place in grad school is secure," he asked.

"That's already done. Bertie Haines's entire class will pass with their semester average standing as their final grades and nobody will have to worry about Haines's finals," the president said. "Bertie will never set foot inside another college classroom."

"Bertie?" Rance said.

"It's what faculty and administration call him. Short for Edelbert. He hates it — insists on being called Edelbert," Overshaw said, sneering as he pronounced the full name, "so that's why nearly every professor on campus calls him Bertie."

"Maybe that'll be what the guys in his cellblock will call him," Rance said.

Overshaw smirked but restrained the temptation to make a joke about the grim existence facing sex offenders in prison. "I don't believe Bertie's going to do well in there," is all Overshaw said.

A few minutes later, the pocket door to the president's study slid open and Gia emerged with the officers and prosecutors. Each attorney handed her a business card, reminded her not to say anything about the case and asked her to call them immediately if she had questions or was approached by anyone attempting to influence her in the matter.

"Again, we will do all we can to protect you and keep this out of the press, but I strongly recommend that you keep to your normal schedules," Lieutenant Blanding told Rance and Gia. "And thank you again, Gia, for all you have done."

The couple said their goodbyes to Art and Vangie Overshaw with Gia hugging Vangie tightly and for a long time. In Rance's SUV, he flipped on the heater as he drove down the circular drive and out the ornate steel gate of the president's mansion on a night that caused them both to shiver.

"Do what's normal," Gia said with a shrug. "How the hell are we supposed to do 'normal' when our lives have been nothing but abnormal since early October? They make it sound so easy."

"I know, baby," Rance said, his right hand reaching for hers. "You had anything to eat?"

"No. Eating was the last thing I was thinking about since breakfast, but now I'm starved. It's going to be hard as hell to find something open at this hour," Gia said, glancing at her watch. "Ten forty-five. Good thing you don't have curfew."

They looked at each other. They spoke the answer and said it at the same instant: "Palmetto Lanes."

The bowling alley and Krystal were the only options for food in Fallstrom at this hour on a weeknight. Palmetto Lanes had been around since the late 1940s, a time when college enrollment ballooned with troops returning from World War II and completing their education on the GI Bill. Bowling was the most wholesome pursuit available as midnight approached and into the wee hours on Saturdays. The crowds weren't what they had been through the 1970s before things like Home Box Office competed with entertainment venues like theaters and bowling alleys for time and money, but bowling remined an overwhelmingly late-night activity, and it still worked up powerful appetites for burgers, fries, corn dogs, chili, soft drink, shakes and beer.

"How are you doing, Gia," Rance asked Gia as they sat at the food counter and waited for their steaming bowls of chili and their strawberry shakes to arrive.

"Well, I didn't see anyone get stabbed or have someone's skull explode all over me, so I guess I'm OK relatively speaking, but I'd rather just be studying finals than doing what I had to do," she said. "Haines had to be taken down, and he was."

"Forget about the final ... Haines's final anyway. Overshaw just told me that everyone in that class would have their average for the semester stand for the final grade. Bertie's given his final final," Rance said. "I found out 'Bertie' is what the faculty and administration called him because it pissed him off."

Gia did a little math in her head, then nodded.

"I'm OK with that. My class average should be 100, so it won't hurt my final GPA," she said.

"You need not worry about your standing in the graduating class next month either," Rance said. "Overshaw's office is flying air cover on that, too, so nothing that happened this semester will damage your average. He also said your place in grad school is secure."

"I would hope so," she said. "I've managed to stay on top of classroom work and tests all semester while I'm not out there battling crime. Damn, I feel like ... Batman."

They both laughed at that remark, drawing a curious look from MiMi Lewis, who had served nearly three generations of Fulbright students at the food counter of Palmetto Lanes. Now 67, she will have had the same job for 60 years come July.

"What's so funny, you two," Mimi said through her trademark smile, always cocked to her left.

"Oh ... nothing, Mimi," Gia said, chuckling. "Nothing ... and everything, ... all at the same time."

●●●

It had taken Rance and Gia weeks to restore their physical intimacy after the Geno Millions horror. Rance couldn't help but wonder about the same thing as he left Palmetto Lanes heading back to the Honors College dorm with Gia.

"You mind staying the night, Rance? Don't really feel like being alone just yet," she said.

"Not at all, baby. I was hoping you'd ask."

Gia locked the door and plopped onto the love seat and stared into the blank television as it booted up on the wall before her.

"What the fuck do I do now? Should I tell Ma? Should you tell your parents? This is just ... a lot."

"For the time being, I think we need to do what the cops and prosecutors said: don't say anything to anybody. Maybe call one of those two government lawyers tomorrow, I guess, and ask whether our families include the souls we can't tell," Rance said.

"So right now, who all knows? The Overshaws know. The cops and prosecutors know. Coach Hemp knows something is going on but how much, we don't know. The folks in those apartments next to Pervy Bertie know something went down but we don't know anything more than that — whether any of them saw my face and could recognize it. That's the shitty part: we don't know who all knows," Gia said.

Rance had brought in their backpacks and plugged in both of their laptops and smartphones in the chargers that proliferated from the outlet along the counter in the kitchenette before he scooted onto the seat beside Gia. He put his hands gently on both of her cheeks, framing her pretty face in his hands.

"Baby, neither of us knows the answer to that, but we do know this: we've lived through worse than this and made it through because we were there for each other during the worst of times, and that's exactly the way it's going to be now."

Then he kissed her tenderly, tentatively, gauging her response. Within moments, she had abandoned her angst and dissolved into the comforting reassurance of his embrace. This was Rance; this was her rock. She climbed onto him, pressing him into the cushions of the love seat, her mouth devouring his, her tongue seeking his out.

"I want you," she growled into his ear. "Now."

Quite differently from the soul-bending trauma inflicted by the events of early October, Gia's libido was energized, just a few hours after a professor had attempted to pressure her into intimacy, exposed his pathetic old-man dick to her and grabbed her arm in an effort to coerce her to touch it before the police kicked in his door.

She pulled the sweatshirt she had been wearing over her head and tossed it onto the bed behind them. Same for the sports bra she was wearing, replete with a small remnant of the tape that had held the wireless body microphone and transmitter in place to capture Bertie Haines's incriminating words. Rance was unbuttoning her jeans and tugging the zipper downward as she unbuttoned his gray, flannel shirt.

Gia stood beside the love seat long enough for Rance to peel her jeans and panties down and allow her to step out of them. She had already removed her Puma running shoes and didn't bother shedding the cotton ankle socks beneath them. Then, as Rance had unbuckled his belt and unbuttoned and unzipped his khakis, she pulled off his deck shoes and grabbed the cuffs of his pants and tugged them off him. She straddled his thighs as he disentangled his boxer briefs from the fast-hardening erection now partially trapped in the elastic waistband. She didn't wait for him to remove them but, rather, swiped her right hand along her pussy to wet it and using it to salve Rance's dick and further harden it.

"Let me do all the work," she said, hungrily looking Rance in the eyes. She crept her hips upward until her slick, pink lips grazed the underside of his stiff shaft, then guided the livid head of his manhood into the aperture of her vagina and sunk down fully upon him in one quick move.

She exhaled as her ass contacted the tightened pod of his scrotum, relishing the feeling of her man being fully sheathed inside her, and she resumed the passionate kissing that had been momentarily disrupted by their hurried disrobing. Never had she shown such abandon in her lovemaking, Rance thought. Her tongue licked his mouth, inside and out, and she sucked on his tongue when he reciprocated by thrusting it into mouth.

Rance grabbed both globes of her perfect ass as she began thrusting her hips into him, pushing his fat cock into her deeper each time and then almost bringing his length out of her before filling herself with it again.

"I love the feel of you as deep as you can be inside me," she whispered against his cheek, her nipples swollen with pleasure as they bobbed and grazed against the sparse hair of his muscled chest. "I want you to fill me with cum, baby."

Now she sat up for a moment, adjusting her angle for greater penetration, and as she did, Rance recognized the dreamy, almost trance-like look in her eyes when she was on the glide path to her climax. Her hips were now in a rapid, somewhat arhythmic, pace controlled by something primal. Rance slid his hand down her belly to the top of her sopping slit where his fingers lightly caressed her clit. It was the equivalent of pulling the pin on a hand grenade because an explosion was just a few heartbeats away.

"Oh God ... oh God ... oh ... cum with me Rance!"

Gia's hips seized and quivered as the muscles of her pelvic floor contracted again and again. Rance bellowed as his head rolled backward as jet after jet of warm, milky jizz pulsed against the cervix of her uterus. As they writhed in their climactic rapture, they held each other tightly, as if they could preserve the fleeting moment forever through sheer physical exertion.

As they wafted back to reality from their shared ecstasy, they resumed the passionate kissing that got all of this started. For long minutes after their wild, tempestuous lovemaking, they lost themselves in the blissful, loving afterglow. When they uncoupled, Gia used her hand to catch most of their commingled juices, licked a generous portion of it then fed the rest to Rance, who sucked the viscous stickiness off her fingers. She giggled.

"Take me to bed, lover," she said. Rance stood, she wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist, and they walked the few steps to the bed, mouths again locked together in passion. In the few seconds it took Rance to deposit her backside on the edge of the bed, his cock had again risen with its tip pushing against the hemispheres of her ass. Gia recognized the situation, aimed his tip at the sweet spot to her pussy and used her heels to push him back into her.

Now, having dispatched his first load of the night, Rance was reloaded for extended-play lovemaking. Gia had sustained an elevated level of arousal and cruised from one orgasmic peak to another. Forty-five minutes, seven position changes and five climaxes later, her last shared with Rance, they lay to exhausted even to shower the sweat and fuck musk from their bodies.

"Forget it. I'll wash the sheets tomorrow," she said as she pulled the covers over herself and Rance, spooned against him and almost immediately fell asleep in his arms.

●●●

Vangie Overshaw had staked out a secluded booth toward the rear of the nearly empty Piedmont Coffee off Water Street in downtown Fallstrom where she sipped her Sumatran dark roast. Gia and Rance arrived a few minutes later and found her. It was approaching 2:30 p.m., the appointed hour for meeting Caroline Agostinelli, an associate producer for "60 Minutes" at CBS.

"OK, the first thing is to know what you're not willing to discuss on the record or even on background," Vangie said, launching into a Cliff's Notes tutorial on interview protocols dating to her undergraduate days as a journalism major.

"Being 'on the record' means that CBS can air any statement you make under those conditions in its report. 'On background' means the reporter can state something that's learned from you but without sourcing — in other words, they can state it as a fact but not say that it came from you. 'Deep background' means that the reporter can use what you say to guide further investigation or reporting to confirm a point without ever saying where the information came from. Material told to the reporter off the record means it can't be used at all, but it's just said to steer the journalist away from an inaccuracy."

"I will not discuss my mom. I will not go into detail about what happened when Geno was killed. I am not getting into my relationship with Rance. I won't go into specifics about my emotional or psychological condition after that incident or where we went to get away," Gia said.

"I will talk about the frustration I felt that this guy was set free to go on a multi-state murder spree and that so little could be done about it until he literally got into the same building and within reach of me," Gia said. "I will talk about all that Fulbright has done to help me through this, but I want no mention of Bertie Haines. If Caroline finds out about it and wants to include it, then we withdraw fully from participation in this story."

"The interview would have to be filmed in total secrecy in a secure location," Gia said. "Those are things I will not bend on."

Vangie shook her head. "Got it. How about you, Rance."

"I'm just here to support Gia. That's been my role all along and that won't change. Her rules are my rules. They can ask me about the football season. But I won't get into anything about my family or details about our courtship," he said. "If the interview ends and I haven't said a word, I'm happy."

"OK. So the ground rules for this conversation with Caroline start out as off-record just so we can get a sense of her and her a sense of us and it will stay off-record unless we specify differently. If she learns anything from the conversation that she might want to use, then she can come back and ask us if we can include it either on-record or on-background, and we always have the ability to approve or veto it," Vangie said.