Dear Daughter (4 page)

And so the only thing left to do was toss about, folding and refolding my legs under me as we crossed the mountains. We stopped briefly in Reno before venturing into the bleak expanse of northern Nevada. With each passing mile the landscape shed vegetation and elevation until it was reduced to little more than dust and bristle and the distant, mocking silhouette of more compelling terrain.

The Lady Vanishes

CELEBRITY NEWS

November 2, 2013 at 3:05 PM

By Us Weekly Staff

In the weeks since notorious accused murderer Janie Jenkins’s release, one question has been on everyone’s minds: Just where in the world has she gone? Sightings and tips have been pouring in to online gossip sites, and cable news networks are reporting new developments practically by the minute. But the leads are proving as elusive as Jenkins herself.

Speculation of late has centered on the exclusive Hawaiian island of Lanai, as several sources close to the case have hinted that Jenkins has traveled to her late mother’s secluded villa there. But despite the legions of paparazzi that have descended on the remote island, no one has been able to uncover any sign of Jenkins.

At least not yet.

Jenkins, now 26, was convicted in 2003 of the brutal murder of her mother, Marion Elsinger (née Jenkins), the enigmatic ex-wife of a number of prominent European businessmen, most recently Jakob Elsinger of Zurich.

Elsinger was discovered the morning of July 15, 2003, when police were called to the Elsinger house by Janie, who reported the crime with what the emergency responder later called an “eerie calm.” When the police arrived they were shocked not only by the physical trauma that had been inflicted on Elsinger’s body but also at what appeared to be a brazen attempt on Janie’s part to destroy key forensic evidence.

Although it’s clear that the DNA evidence in Jenkins’s case was indeed mishandled by the Los Angeles County Crime Lab, it seems that most Americans still believe Jenkins is guilty. While there are those who have cautioned against vigilantism, others, such as Trace Kessler of the crime blog “Without a Trace,” have embraced it. Kessler has been particularly pro-active in his pursuit of Jenkins, even going so far as to offer a reward to anyone with information that might point to Janie’s location.

In the end, whatever the information or misinformation might be, one thing is clear: Guilty or not, wherever Janie Jenkins plans to go, she has a treacherous road ahead of her.

CHAPTER FOUR

When I woke up Sunday night it was dark and smelled of something sweet, and so it took me too long to remember where I was—it was dark and smelled of something sweet when I found her, too. But this was a different dark, an unremitting dark, not one softened by cut-velvet curtains. And it didn’t smell of curdled blood, it smelled of oranges. Antiseptic oranges.

Lysol, I realized. I was in the bathroom.

Again.

I pressed the heels of my hands against my temples and squeezed my brain awake.

I remembered then. I’d started nodding off early Sunday evening—somewhere near Denver—but that stupid door kept slamming open, startling me awake, admitting the unsettling chatter of passersby, alerting me again and again to my inadequate defenses. I tried to stay awake by dwelling on the thought that exhaustion must feel a lot like dying, but even that wasn’t enough. It had been three days since I’d slept.

Finally, deliriously, I’d given up and locked myself in the bathroom.

The rest of me rebooted, and my senses kicked in one by one. I identified first no fewer than seventeen knots in my lower back. Second, a set of dim outlines: of the toilet, the showerhead, the drain in the floor, and the crazy space phone Noah had given me. It was buzzing.

The last phone I had was a clunky green Nokia with a screen the size of a postage stamp; this phone was sleek and white and didn’t even have a keypad. It didn’t even look like a phone—but then, I didn’t need it for talking. I just needed it to keep tabs on Trace Kessler.

I pulled up his latest post.

Are we just going to let her get away with this? Will she never be held accountable for her actions? No. We will NOT. This will not stand. There is a MURDERER on the loose. It’s time for those of us who believe in justice to track Janie Jenkins down.

I shoved the phone into my back pocket.
God
, what was his damage?

I fumbled for the door handle and pushed my way out into the compartment—and swallowed a curse. I wasn’t alone: The porter I’d managed to avoid the night before, an older man with more-salt-than-pepper hair and a face that belonged on a box of Quaker Oats, was in the process of turning down the bed. The blankets had been snapped tight, and he’d just placed a foil-wrapped chunk of chocolate on the pillow. He’d been there for some time.

He looked up. “Sorry to disturb you, Ma’am,” he said, uncertainty nipping at the edges of an otherwise Rockwellian smile. “I didn’t realize you were in here.”

I skimmed the sour off my expression and reached for my social graces.

“You, too,” popped out.

I winced.

“I mean,” I went on, “I didn’t realize
you
were in here, either. Obviously. So . . .” I reached for my glasses and nudged them up my nose to give my hands something to do.

Just then, the train came to a bridge and slowed. I reached for the compartment door, knowing what was coming, but I was too late. When the train sped up again, the door rolled open. I glanced over; in the hallway two women with mom-of-four-kids hair walked past.

“So I read Janie Jenkins has, like, disappeared,” one bellowed.

I sucked in a grotesquely audible breath. The porter’s eyes locked on mine. And then at least twenty seconds passed as I wondered if it would be too conspicuous if I just shut myself back in the bathroom.

I decided to try to draw the porter’s attention to the window and away from my face. “The scenery here is so lovely, don’t you think?”

He frowned.

(“Wasn’t she in Hawaii?” the other woman brayed.)

“How about this weather?” I asked.

(“I heard she’s on her way to Chicago.”

“What? You mean where
we’re
going?”

“Oh my god, Mary, what if she’s on our train?”)

The porter was starting to look nervous, fiddling with the toiletries that were balanced precariously on the edge of the tiny sink that was set into the compartment wall next to the bed. Shampoo. Conditioner. Shower Gel. Face Lotion. A travel-sized soap.

“How ’bout them Bears?” I tried.

From the hallway there was a guttural noise of disgust, and then the first woman spoke up again: “If I saw Janie Jenkins I’d spit in her face.”

The second woman didn’t hesitate. “I’d run.”

I rubbed my forehead. The porter was turning the little bottles again and again. His hands—were they shaking? Had he recognized me? No, surely not. This was a man who saw hundreds of people a day. He’d take no more notice of me than a greengrocer would a head of lettuce, right? Even if it was a head of lettuce that had been hiding in a bathroom, small talked like someone just off the psych ward, and was heading for a city suspected to be the destination of a notorious suspected murderer. . . .

I took the smallest, slightest experimental step toward the porter, and he flinched, knocking the entire collection of toiletries onto the floor.

“Well, shit,” I said.

His gaze cut to the hallway and back. “I should really—”

I’d like to say that what I did next was a conscious decision, but in truth it was out of my control, the rubber band of my true character snapping back into place.

I sidled forward, reaching around the porter to pull the door shut. This time, miraculously, it latched.
Everything
latched.

The porter tried to inch away; I didn’t let him.

“Before you go,” I said, “I do have one question.”

He swallowed. “Yes, Ma’am?”

I took another step forward and flicked a finger at his name tag. “Mr. Shelton, is it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I was wondering if you happen to have a first name.”

His breath caught, held.

Almost reflexively, my right hand slipped into my purse. “Of course, I don’t suppose it would be too difficult to track down myself, what with duty rosters and all. In fact, I bet everything’s online these days. Names, numbers—addresses.” I found the sharpened scissors, wrapped my fingers around the handle. “Privacy just isn’t what it used to be, is it?”

“I won’t say anything,” he croaked out.

I smiled. “Say anything about what?”

He shook his head helplessly.

I let the scissors fall back to the bottom of my bag. “Right answer,” I said. I stepped back and opened the door. “See that you don’t forget it.”

He dashed out without a backward glance, bless his heart.

My eyes tracked back to the toiletries, and I caught sight of myself in the mirror. Unsurprisingly, my smile wasn’t warm. It was forced and terrible, a carnival caricature.

Was that how a killer smiled
?

I relaxed my cheeks and eyelids and jaw until my expression approximated something like amiability.

God, that’s even worse
.

I grunted and bent down to retrieve the bottles from the floor. No reason to leave perfectly acceptable shampoo and conditioner behind.

No one who knew Janie Jenkins would have believed she was capable of murder.

“I never would’ve guessed,” said Grant Collins, one of Janie’s classmates. “I mean, why would she do it? She was already famous.” He paused. “And smokin’.”

Ainsley Butler, eighteen, was one of Janie’s closest friends and originally one of Janie’s staunchest supporters. “It isn’t true,” she told me over a cocktail (that the waiter at Soho House hadn’t thought twice about serving her). “I’ve known Jane since she moved here,” she said. “I mean, I’m basically her best friend. She borrowed clothes from me all the time. She would never do anything like this.”

When I asked Ainsley to comment on the reports of Janie’s fractious relationship with her mother, she was less forthcoming. “I don’t know anything about that,” she said, tight-lipped.

When I spoke with Ainsley shortly before the trial, however, her demeanor was markedly different. I asked her if she thought of her friend differently now that she knew the details of the crime. “I’m so appalled and disgusted,” she said. “But now? Looking back? I’m totally not surprised. And I just feel so blessed that she’s facing the consequences for her actions, because I am 100 percent positive I would have been next.”

—Alexis Papadopoulos,
And the Devil Did Grin: The Janie Jenkins Story

CHAPTER FIVE

A few minutes before midnight, the train ground to a halt in front of a stout brick building. I grabbed my stuff and poked my head out into the hall before hustling over to the space between my car and the next. I propped my suitcase up with my knee and struggled into my coat and gloves, letting the syncopated rumble of the train urge my thoughts out of the rut they’d fallen into.

I’d never make it to Omaha, not now—scare tactics like the ones I’d just used are only effective in confined spaces. As soon as the porter’s terror dissipated he would realize how empty my threats had been, and before long he’d be on the phone to his wife or daughter or Trace. And I’d be damned if I let the first photograph of me in ten years be taken on fucking
Amtrak
. I mean, the lighting alone.

No, I had to get off this train
now
.

I tucked my chin to my chest, shoved open the door, and hopped off, dragging my suitcase behind me. I let out a breath when it became clear that I was the only passenger to disembark. The town—McCook, that’s what the sign said—clearly wasn’t much of a tourist destination, but given my luck so far, I wouldn’t have been particularly shocked to discover that it was hosting the Nebraska State Fair or county sheriffs’ convention.

I charged forward like I knew where I was going, and I managed to make it out of the station and down the street before the train departed. As soon as it was out of sight, I stopped to take a breath and get my bearings. I was heading west, that much I could tell, but whether I was heading into or out of town I couldn’t say. McCook defied such distinctions, a town of scattered ashes without a gravestone.

I walked on. The air smelled of burnt autumn leaves even though there weren’t any trees that I could see—but then, there weren’t any streetlights either, so who could say what was or wasn’t out there? The only noise was the clatter and roll of my suitcase on the uneven pavement, the fleshy slap of my shoes against the concrete. I kept looking over my shoulder.

I pulled up my coat collar to warm away the goose bumps.

Then,
there
, two blocks over: a motel, a mom-and-pop kind of place with a hand-stenciled sign and a rusty blue truck parked off to the side. I cased it from across the street, drumming my fingers against my lips. Through the lobby window I could see hardwood floors and bearskin rugs, a tidy display of brochures, framed pictures of fat cattle. A young woman leaned on the front desk, staring intently at the cellphone in her hands.

Perfect—except,
shit
, for the security camera in the back corner.

I looked down the street, but I couldn’t see anything else, not even in the distance. I was cold, I was tired, and I knew I was in for a nasty crash the moment my stomach processed that last sick slosh of adrenaline from the train. I needed privacy more than anything at that moment.