Janie Face to Face (8 page)

In August, Brendan Spring found himself on the stupid campus, surrounded by stupid people and a stupid coach. Coach had the nerve to tell Brendan he wasn’t trying. Preseason began with Brendan sitting on the bench.

“I’m better than any of them!” he shouted at the coach.

“You
could
be better,” the coach said. “But you’re not.”

Brendan struggled to make friends. The rest of the team was lukewarm. His roommate hardly noticed him.

When he looked into his future, the only thing Brendan could see for himself was teaching elementary school gym.

Every hope and plan had rotted. The taste of failure would not leave his mouth. He was losing weight.

He did not bother to communicate with his family. They had gone to every game he played in high school, telling him how wonderful he was. Making scrapbooks. Filming him. It was their fault he had big dreams. It was their fault he was struggling in some loser dump of a college.

Brendan hardly ever even opened his parents’ emails, and half the time he didn’t bother with Facebook. He never had anything to post, and the shock of that was so great he couldn’t stand the whole concept.

By February of his freshman year, Brendan’s basketball team had lost too many games to make the playoffs. They were losers among losers.

Sometimes the only thing Brendan did after he woke up was go back to sleep. He was vaguely aware that the second semester was drawing to an end and that other guys were making summer plans. He did not want to go home to New Jersey. But what else could he do? Where else could he go?

When a researcher approached Brendan about a book on the kidnapping, Brendan chose not to consider that he didn’t know much. He’d been even younger than toddler Jennie when it happened. He had no memory of her before the kidnapping and no memory of the events after it.

Brendan Spring said to the researcher, “Sure. Whatever.”

In Boulder, Colorado, Stephen Spring was sitting at his computer, staring at a list of unopened emails. Stephen didn’t check email often, but professors communicated via email, and so did his parents. And now, Calvin Vinesett had Stephen’s email address.

“Dear Mr. Spring,” the first message began. It described the author’s plans for his book on Janie Johnson. It featured links to websites and bookstores.

Calvin Vinesett did not refer to the central person in his story by her real name, Jennie Spring. He planned to write a “true crime” book about a person who never even existed! Janie Johnson. It made Stephen crazy.

Stephen deleted the messages, but he could not delete them unread. It was like needing to know your enemy.

Today’s email was from another person. Not Calvin Vinesett himself, but a hired researcher.

Stephen was rattled. How had this guy found out about the support checks? Janie herself hadn’t known until a few years ago, when Frank was hospitalized with a stroke. Janie had gone into his files so she could handle some of the household finances and stumbled upon years of canceled checks.

Stephen hadn’t even known what a canceled check was. It seemed that at one time, banks mailed your used checks back to you, because you didn’t have an Internet site to keep track of them. Stephen had a checking account, but only so he could have a debit card. He wrote maybe one paper check a year, but Mr. Johnson had written paper checks for everything.

Mr. Johnson hadn’t used the name Johnson or Javensen on those checks, so when Hannah got her check, she could cash it but she couldn’t locate the sender.

How creepy it was. The daughter hiding from the parents and the parents hiding from the daughter.

From that old file, it was clear that Frank began sending money to Hannah soon after she dropped toddler Janie off. Hannah had probably asked him for money and her father had probably still loved her. Stephen was okay with that. But a dozen years later, when Frank and Miranda were faced with the fact that this little girl had been kidnapped by that same Hannah, Frank should have told the FBI. Should have said, “You can stake out the post office branch in Boulder, Colorado, and catch her.”

But he hadn’t. He’d never missed a check.

When Janie had figured that out, she’d been furious. Janie had given up her real true birth family to return to the mother and father who had brought her up. She had done it out of love and loyalty.

And now she had proof that her other father’s heart belonged to the kidnapper.

But Janie did not call the FBI either! She believed that Miranda had never known about the support checks. She believed all that was Frank’s doing. Now that Frank was borderline dead in a hospital room and Miranda had all she could handle, Janie was not about to hurt her even more. Instead, Janie had decided to hurt Stephen.

She’d faked interest in him and pretended that she too might attend college in Colorado. She’d even brought her
boyfriend, Reeve, and Stephen’s little brother Brian into her scheme. What she really wanted to do was confront Hannah herself. But in the end, she chickened out.

Eventually Stephen and his parents learned the whole story.

“I hate her,” Stephen had said. “How can she be loyal to her kidnapper’s disgusting father?”

“She’s your sister,” said his mother. “We are not going to hate her. And everybody is doing the best they can.”

“Janie never does the best
she
can!” yelled Stephen. “And Frank Johnson sure wasn’t doing the best
he
could!”

“Janie wrote a final check and a final message,” said Stephen’s mother. “Janie ended it.”

“Janie could have arranged for Hannah to be caught!”

“I’m sure Janie would love it if somebody
else
caught the kidnapper,” said Stephen’s father. “But Janie still calls the Johnsons Mom and Dad. Put yourself in her place, Stephen.”

Janie definitely stood where Stephen never wanted to be.

Stephen had staked out the post office for a while after Janie’s visit. He never saw anybody who looked like Hannah. But Hannah wouldn’t necessarily pick up her own check. She could ask somebody else to do it for her. Next Stephen sent a letter to her box, pretending he had money for Tiffany Spratt, and giving his own cell phone number, a risk he took only because he was changing providers and would be getting a new number.

But his letter was returned unopened. A rubber stamp listed possible reasons a letter might be returned to the sender. Two were checked: Box closed. No forwarding address.

When Calvin Vinesett contacted the family, they all knew Janie wouldn’t want them to talk about her and her lives.
Stephen understood that the only thing he could give his difficult sister was silence.

Now, in his apartment, his girlfriend, Kathleen, was reading his mail over his shoulder, a habit Stephen detested.

Kathleen gasped. “What! Mr. Johnson was sending money to Hannah? Here in Boulder? Even after he knew she was Janie’s kidnapper?”

Stephen nodded.

“And you didn’t tell me?” she shrieked.

Stephen froze.

“I’m sorry,” she said instantly, “of course you didn’t tell me, it’s none of my business.”

“Correct.”

Kathleen backed away, literally and figuratively.

How had the researcher found out? Stephen wondered. The pool of informants was small. It wouldn’t have been Janie herself. It certainly wouldn’t have been Mrs. Johnson, whether she knew about it or not, and Mr. Johnson was all but a turnip.

That left Stephen’s family. Mom? Dad? But Stephen thought that their desire to win Janie back into the family would trump any desire to share with a true crime writer.

Jodie was in Haiti, and although she could still text and email, Stephen couldn’t imagine that she’d bother, and he wasn’t sure she had ever known about the checks anyway.

The twins? Brian had known. Brian and Reeve had flown out with Janie to Boulder on that trip to find Hannah. Brian was the one who had spilled the facts to Stephen. But Brian was Janie’s big supporter. It was hard to picture him telling all
to the writer. On the other hand, Brian was all about books. Maybe he couldn’t resist meeting a famous author. Maybe he wanted to be a writer himself and was eager to work on the project. As for Brendan, he never paid attention to family matters. Stephen doubted that Brendan knew about the checks.

It wasn’t that Stephen minded the author finding out. It proved that the author was not a dummy. Knew how to research. Did thorough interviews.

It was just unsettling.

Maybe it isn’t family, he thought. Maybe it’s friends. We all have friends who know a little or a lot. Janie’s best friend is that Sarah-Charlotte. I don’t know her well enough to know if she’d keep secrets for Janie’s sake. Janie’s former boyfriend is Reeve. I do know Reeve. And we all know Reeve will sell secrets in order to hear his own voice. Janie broke up with him. Mom says she’s dating somebody else. Maybe Reeve is mad and getting revenge.

The trouble was, Stephen liked Reeve. He did not want Reeve to be the bad guy. And Reeve had spent the last few years desperately trying to convince Janie that he would never behave that way again.

Reeve had gone into broadcasting. But in sports. ESPN was never going to refer to a face on a milk carton.

Now, in his apartment, with Kathleen hovering nearby, Stephen wondered if his girlfriend, who was fascinated by every detail of the Spring family history, might be talking to the researcher. Kathleen, whose father was an FBI agent.

But it was hard to imagine. She had not known about the
checks, and Stephen was pretty sure she wanted him more than she wanted interviews with strangers.

Kathleen did not dare give advice. If she said, “It would be good for you to talk about it, Stephen. And a bestseller could flush out the kidnapper,” this romance would be over.

Kathleen breathed quietly so Stephen would not remember she was there. Stephen liked a girl who was somewhat in his life, not a girl who dominated it.

Stephen wouldn’t let Kathleen live with him or even spend the night. He felt that if she moved in, she’d feel all permanent and expect stuff. He’d run out of oxygen and have to throw himself off a cliff.

Kathleen’s mother didn’t think Stephen even loved her.

“He loves me sometimes,” Kathleen would say.

Stephen and Kathleen were both twenty-four. Stephen was getting a graduate degree in engineering while Kathleen was still inching toward her undergrad degree. She loved college. Why rush it? Who cared how long it took? Well, her parents cared, since they were paying, but Kathleen tried not to worry about that.

She had a sad fleeting thought that she should break up with Stephen. College was prime husband-hunting territory. This very semester, she would finally finish college and have to find work in an office somewhere, and she’d have no hope.

Marriage and children are not what I want, she reminded herself sternly. I’m going to have a great career, if I can just think of one. I’ll worry about marriage and children some other decade.

She was lying. She wanted Stephen.

Like all his family, he had red hair. He had a buzz cut right now and looked completely different from the boy she had fallen in love with a few years ago. She liked to run her hand over the bristles.

He was muscular, because Boulder was an outdoor kind of place, and the two of them were constantly outside: skiing in winter; bicycling, playing tennis, and hiking in summer. And right now, tough strong Stephen Spring was afraid of an email.

When they first met, Kathleen had pushed hard for details about the Spring family saga. She demanded facts and photographs of the kidnapping. Stephen found out that Kathleen’s father was an FBI agent, and dumped her. It took Kathleen the whole next year of college to inch back into Stephen’s favor.

Janie, the kidnapette, as Kathleen called her, with her mass of auburn curls, must have been adorable in her role. Kathleen could perfectly imagine Hannah, too, because of the well-publicized high school photograph—a slender, sober girl with long blond hair. Kathleen imagined pretty, wispy Hannah on a stool at the ice cream counter with this cute little toddler. Whisking her away for a fun little drive. And then Hannah thinking, Uh-oh. This is called kidnapping. I think I want to get out of this.

Kathleen imagined Hannah driving all the way to Mommy and Daddy’s house and trilling a little song of need. “Oh, I know I’ve been away for years without calling or writing, and I know you’ve suffered, but after all, life isn’t fair, and
meanwhile, here’s my darling baby girl. You bring her up! Won’t it be fun! Well—I’m off! Enjoy!”

She could imagine Hannah giggling as she drove on.

What vehicle had Hannah used? They never knew.

It was a big country. Lots of stolen cars. Hannah had probably dumped hers somewhere, and after seventeen years, that getaway car had long ago come to the end of its road.

Stephen pushed his rolling desk chair away from the screen. An expensive swivel chair with adjustable padded back, arms, and seat, it had been abandoned on a sidewalk on trash day because it was missing one caster. Stephen had lugged it home and bought another caster, and the chair worked fine. He loved adjusting it. So did Kathleen. She couldn’t help herself. When she sat at his desk, she had to change his chair, even though she knew it annoyed him.

“You know what I think is the most startling part of the whole kidnap?” said Stephen suddenly.

Stephen never discussed the kidnap. Kathleen listened eagerly.

“Janie never had nightmares,” said Stephen. “She was the victim, but she never had nightmares. The rest of us—nightmares swarmed us for years after she disappeared. The terrible things that could happen to small children and the terrible things that probably had happened to our baby sister. The worst memory I have is the first day, a few hours after Jennie disappeared. The police were there. Half the shoppers in the mall were there. Security found this suspicious car on the side of the parking lot. It was an old four-door sedan. I was too little then to identify cars. But it was heavier and longer
than the cars I knew. It was filthy. Its upholstery was torn, like something had chewed it. One of the policemen took a metal stick from his car and pried open the trunk. When my mother screamed, I realized that the policeman thought my baby sister might be in there. I remember looking around, quick, counting the rest of us. Yes, Jodie was there. Yes, Brian was there. Yes, Brendan was there. I remember Daddy’s car shooting into the parking lot. I remember how he leapt out of the car and forgot to close the door and ran over and it was like his face had fallen off and I didn’t know who he was. And I remember my mother tottering toward the abandoned car, making these little noises, like an animal, but there was nothing in the trunk after all, and we were supposed to feel better. I looked out at that huge parking lot, all those hundreds of cars, and all those trunks. For years, I kept counting my brothers and sister, to make sure the rest of us were all still here.”