THE FOURTH PIECE OF THE KIDNAPPER’S PUZZLE
After the mall event, and the Connecticut event, the woman formerly known as Hannah drifted around the country, trying to find the old members of her group. But they had all moved on. Briefly, she traveled by train. She wouldn’t mind spending her life looking out a window and showing up in the dining car a few times a day while somebody else drove.
The train trip ended, and Hannah found herself on the West Coast, that day in New Jersey as remote as elementary school.
In California, the weather was perfect but the loneliness deeper.
How did everybody find all those friends with whom they laughed and ate?
It didn’t matter.
Her father would send money to Tiffany Spratt’s post office box. Hannah wouldn’t be the only one back in Boulder who skied and hiked, took a class or two, and then picked up their checks. Well, except she didn’t plan to ski or hike or take a class. What would she do? With all that money, she would have choices.
And so Hannah made her way to Colorado and the post office box.
The post office box anchored her to the world. Stuff filled the box. It was so packed she had to pry everything out. Ads and flyers. Requests for donations. Giveaway newspapers. Even free credit cards, although they never worked when she tried them. She unfolded every piece of junk mail carefully, because her check was in there somewhere.
Yes!
The envelope was crushed, but the check was safe.
She headed for a bank, her Tiffany Spratt ID in her hand.
But they would not cash it.
In the end, she had to open a bank account with that check and wait day after day for the bank to decide it was real. Only then could she have the money. But not all of it! They insisted that she had to leave some in the bank, and furthermore, they charged a fee.
The establishment was so greedy!
But the real shock was, Frank’s check wasn’t enough money to live well.
It wasn’t even enough money to live poorly!
Frank was probably lavishing money on that little girl. But would he pay Hannah’s bills? No! She would have to get a job. And that had never worked for her. She was too fragile.
Back there in Connecticut, she had forced herself to give the little Janie creature a hug and a kiss when she was leaving, as if she really were its mother. As Hannah had gotten into her stolen car, Miranda’s voice had floated after her: “We have to go to the store, Frank. We need sippy cups and pajamas and a car seat. We need …”
Frank and Miranda were out there buying things for somebody else’s child while refusing to give enough to Hannah! Their real daughter!
Hannah hated them.
She wondered if the police had found her parents yet, and if they were headed to prison. It occurred to her that if her parents were imprisoned, they could not support her.
On the other hand, if they were in prison, their money was hers.
Hannah did not read newspapers, and when she was in the location of a television, she certainly didn’t waste it on the news. She did not know if her parents were doing time for kidnapping.
She didn’t feel like talking to them, but the telephone was her only choice.
Dormitories always had public phones, and sure enough, she wandered into a student lounge and found three wall phones, each in its little cubicle, waiting for her coins.
If the police hadn’t found Frank and Miranda, she’d threaten her father: Give me money or I’m coming for my little girl.
If the police had found them, the police might even answer the phone. But they couldn’t find Hannah even if they traced the number. This was a dorm; hundreds of people used this phone.
She dropped her coins into the slots and poked the little buttons, oddly pleased that she remembered the number after all these years.
But the phone number of Frank and Miranda Javensen had been disconnected.
CHAPTER FOUR
Brendan Spring had been the most successful person in his family, and the least liked. Brendan thought of sports first, and everything and everyone else second. To be precise, he thought first of himself excelling in sports.
In his dreams, Brendan was courted by Big Ten schools, flown in to tour campuses, treated as a prize. In high school, he rarely concerned himself with books and academics, because he was going to be a star on the basketball court. His grades were low, but so what?
His favorite dream was the television interview where he was introduced as a legend. He would duck his head in a humble fashion, although he would be such an icon that sneakers were named for him.
His kidnap sister’s boyfriend, Reeve, had graduated from college and gotten a job with ESPN. Brendan liked to imagine the day Reeve would beg for an interview. “It will help my career,” Reeve would plead.
When Janie had been found—or rather, when she had found them—her appearance at their house, her failure to thrive, and her return to the kidnap family had hardly made a dent in Brendan’s life. The missing Jennie Spring was just an annoying girl who increased the wait time for the one bathroom. She wouldn’t even use her name, but insisted she was a person named Janie. She left before Brendan had really noticed that she’d arrived. In his mind, he referred to her as J/J.
His older brother, Stephen, his other sister, Jodie, and his twin, Brian, pursued Janie, following her up to Connecticut and even becoming friends with the other parents, Frank and Miranda, and hanging out with the boyfriend, Reeve. Brendan couldn’t work up any interest.
It had no longer been necessary for the Springs to keep the shabby little house with the street address they hoped a lost child might somehow remember. The lost child had remembered, had come home, and didn’t like it there.
So the Springs moved to a big house, with a bedroom and bath for each kid.
A separate bedroom changed everything. Brendan no longer had his twin to hold him back. Brendan wanted success more than he wanted kindness. His family suspected this but pretended it wasn’t so. The Spring children were supposed to have all the virtues and think of each other first. But the minute the twins were no longer confined to a single bedroom, Brendan forgot he even had a twin.
Anyway, his twin was embarrassing. If Brian had been a computer nerd, that would have been acceptable. But Brian just sat around reading stuff nobody cared about, like medieval history. While Brendan dreamed of being a sports legend, Brian dreamed of getting an e-reader to load with history books.
Senior year in high school arrived and Brendan waited to be courted by the finest basketball coaches in the country.
But they did not come.
He waited for the athletic scholarships at the top schools.
But he was not offered any.
Brendan was not even accepted at a Division I school.
He endured the end of senior year pretending to be proud that he was going to some loser college nobody had ever heard of.
When his mother said, “Well, you never did study; you’re lucky you got in anywhere,” he wanted to leave his family forever.
When his dad said, “Make the best of it,” Brendan wanted to shove him.
When Jodie snapped, “Oh, stop whimpering,” and Stephen said, “So life isn’t fair; so you just noticed?” Brendan thought, Who needs these people, anyway?
His twin got into the school of his choice.
I’m going to Nowheresville and he goes to Harvard, thought Brendan. Brian probably did it on purpose to show me up.
More than anything, Brendan hated his twin’s sympathy.
He seriously considered joining the army, which would have been better than showing up at that stupid college. But that summer, he was lethargic. This had never happened to him before. He was usually exploding with energy. His parents didn’t notice. They were dreaming of how it would be when, the first time in decades, they would have no kids at home. They were either packing suitcases for Brendan and Brian or rejoicing that old J/J showed up once in a while. Then didn’t his
crazy sister Jodie decide to go off on some mission year to Haiti? Jodie got treated like a goddess because she was giving a year to the poor. Who cared about the poor?
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.
Dear Mr. Spring,
I know that you and your family have mixed feelings about a book on the kidnapping of your younger sister. I applaud how protective you are of her and of each other. But I remain hopeful that you and I can meet and talk.
The more I research, the more shocking aspects I uncover.
I have learned that the father of Hannah Javensen sent her support checks for many years, and that he mailed those to a post office box right here in Boulder.
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.