A Rip in Heaven: A Memoir of Murder And Its Aftermath

by Jeanine Cummins

  Sheila turned and marched toward the house, where Jacquie put her arms around her big sister and used her sleeve to dry Sheila’s tears.

  “Get out, get out, get the fuck out of here now!” Jacquie mimicked her sister as the two of them laughed and cried with their foreheads together for a moment. “Well, I think we’ve found one homicidal maniac, anyway.”

  “Oh God, Jacquie, that was awful,” Sheila responded. “Was I completely nuts?”

  “You were perfect,” Jacquie answered. “Absolutely perfect. And I don’t think they’ll be able to use any of that footage — it was so strewn with profanity.”

  They both laughed again and spent a few minutes composing themselves and drying their faces before they returned to the house.

  Inside, Tink and Jamie had recovered from their brush with fame and were now re-entrenched at the Nintendo, sore thumbs and all. Kathy was a bit more shook up and she sought a quiet corner where she could be alone and think for a while. The ground floor was completely crowded — there were people in every room. Kathy crept quietly through the kitchen and creaked open the door to the basement. It was dark downstairs. She heaved a sigh of relief, glanced around at all the chatting grown-ups to make sure no one was noticing her, and then slipped inside the stairwell, closing the door behind her. She felt along the wall in the dark to find the light switch and stepped gingerly down the stairs toward Julie’s room.

  Julie had been newly installed in this room just a few months before. It was an unfinished basement, and only Julie’s corner had a nice new wooden door, cool white tiles on the floor, and dry-wall covering the beams and boards of the house’s frame. She had wasted no time stamping her personality on the room.

  Kathy stepped inside and turned the light on. She knew that Julie wouldn’t mind her being there. She thought about listening to music but she didn’t feel right about going through Julie’s tapes, so she avoided the radio altogether and went to lie down on the bed. She lay with her hands laced together behind her neck and her legs stretched out, studying the walls. She knew with a sickening suddenness that she would remember this day every day for the rest of her life. She was filled with a desire to absorb every detail of her cousins. She sat up silently cross-legged on the bed and began trying to mentally catalogue and memorize the room.

  Julie’s desk was heaped with pages and pages of poetry, which she had proudly shared with Kathy and Tink when they visited earlier in the week. Kathy stood up now and approached the little desk; she wanted to read some of her cousin’s poems again. When she did, she was stunned at how much the meanings of Julie’s words had changed in one day:

  She remembers the unwelcome hands

  The stranger

  The safety that is now a threat

  The cold sky, white with snow

  Her hands before her

  Becoming an old woman’s

  The leaves cover the front yard

  The wind a bitter chill

  She loves you in her own uncertain way

  Fiercely

  Desperately

  It may just be the fear

  That clings to her back

  Stiffens her shoulders

  It may just be the loneliness

  The letting go of hope

  But she thinks of you often

  She loves you fiercely, doubtfully

  Wonders if she’ll ever see you again,

  Even though sometimes

  She can’t bear the thought of you

  She dreams of riverbeds, rocks and bridges

  And remembers sadly a lost symphony

  Kathy shuddered as she let the words sink in, and decided that one poem was her limit for the day. She avoided reading the ones that were tacked up to the walls, hanging alongside the political slogans and Greenpeace posters. Her eyes came to rest on the focal point of the room: the cork bulletin board that hung above the tidy but crowded desk. In the center of the board was a royal-blue bumper sticker stuck up with a pin, and in large white block letters, it read GEORGE BUSH IS A TRANSVESTITE. Kathy chuckled in spite of herself. There were strings of red, orange, and yellow beads that Julie had probably strung herself hanging from the top two corners of the board. But amid the clutter, the next thing that caught Kathy’s eye was a plain and simple yellow index card with an ink drawing on it of a candle wrapped in barbed wire.

  That candle was a symbol that resonated with Kathy. The first time she had seen it was ten years before, and it was one of her earliest vivid memories. It had been a beautiful early spring day in 1981 and Dad had angrily shushed the whole family during the evening news. Young Kathy had turned wide-eyed to the television screen and watched the silent, solemn protesters, each one carrying a large placard bearing a picture of that candle wrapped in barbed wire. At the time she hadn’t known what Amnesty International was, or what hunger striking meant. She hadn’t understood why her father had cried and told them all that this was a day of terrible grief for Catholic and Irish households all over the world. But the grim newscaster had reported that, after sixty-six days on hunger strike in an English prison, civil-rights leader Bobby Sands was dead.

  She had always remembered that name, Bobby Sands. When she had gotten old enough, she had looked him up at the public library and read about his life. She had learned about how he had earned that candle wrapped in barbed wire. And now here, on the bulletin board above Julie’s desk, was that same strong image. Kathy drew connections in her own mind. She wasn’t yet fifteen, but she suddenly felt like a very old woman, bent with the weight of wisdom. From that day forward, she would forever associate that Amnesty International candle with deaths of great importance and the unbearable grief that accompanies them.

  Tom’s second polygraph had gone just as badly as the first one, or worse, if possible. His relief when the examiner called the homicide squad room to tell the detectives they were finished was enormous.

  Sergeant Michael Guzy was the detective who appeared in the polygraph office a few minutes later to escort Tom back up to homicide. Tom felt goosebumps prickle his skin as he passed the desk where the examiner sat glaring up at him. The man’s hatred for Tom was almost tangible.

  The footsteps of Tom and Guzy echoed down the long corridor toward the elevator. Tom was still shaken, but the physicality of relief was starting to settle on him and he felt like hugging this new detective for getting him out of there. He remembered Trevor saying that he would be free to go after the polygraph and, for the first time that day, Tom was actually looking forward to going home. Things were getting scary around here and, besides, he felt he had done everything he could to help at present. He was simply too exhausted to keep going.

  “That guy was really mean to me,” Tom said to Guzy as the elevator doors slipped shut. “I don’t know what his problem was, but he really scared me. I mean, he was really, really mean to me.”

  Tom looked up at the detective next to him, who didn’t say anything, but just kind of nodded. Tom took it as a reassuring gesture. He was so relieved to be headed away from that maniac and back to the homicide room, where his father was, and the team of detectives who had been so nice to him all day, so sympathetic and helpful. Tears still threatened his eyes and he realized that his face was soaked with them. He started to feel a little babyish, and spent the remainder of ride up in the elevator drying his face with his sleeve and generally trying to pull himself together.

  “Right this way.” Guzy motioned Tom into a small room with a window, a desk and two chairs.

  It looked like an office, but there were no personal artifacts that Tom could see. The room was tiny, claustrophobic, despite the curtainless window and the mirror on one wall. Tom peered over his shoulder back into the squad room and tried to catch a glimpse of his father, but Guzy was mostly blocking his view. He turned and sat down in the hard metal chair in front of the desk.

  “I guess we’ve got some problems with this polygraph,” the sergeant said.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” Tom began. “I
guess maybe that’s why that guy downstairs was so mean. I don’t know what went wrong, but I couldn’t stay awake and . . .”

  “All right, let’s cut the bullshit,” Guzy interrupted. “What the fuck did you do to those two girls, you sick little shit?”

  Tom stopped talking in mid-sentence and his mouth hung open. There was a moment of silence in the tiny room.

  “I . . . I didn’t do anything to them. They’re my cousins . . .” he stammered.

  Guzy lost it. He slammed his open hands down on the tiny desk and popped out of his seat. His face was suddenly red and there was a vein throbbing visibly in his forehead. How had he become so angry so fast? Tom wondered. His entire demeanor had changed. Even his physical appearance seemed to alter. He seemed huge, more cumbersome, and his skin seemed to glow red with fury.

  “I’m sick and tired of your little-innocent-boy act,” he shouted.

  “Nobody’s buying it. You’re a liar, and we all know you’re a liar, so you may as well drop the charade, you twisted fuck.”

  Guzy was around the desk now, standing beside Tom’s chair, screaming into his ear. Tom had a history of bad ears. He had burst his eardrums before, and he shrank away from the sergeant now. The tears were coming so fast now that Tom couldn’t even feel them and, after looking briefly at the throbbing, contorted face of his accuser, he turned and focused his eyes on the window. It was a sunny day out and, through the blur of his tears, Tom watched the sunlight glinting off the chrome and glass of the passing cars. He wished he were in one of those cars, driving away. With Julie. He tried to make himself small in the chair. “I didn’t do it,” Tom said lamely through his tears. “I couldn’t do a thing like that.”

  Before long Tom ceased to even hear Guzy’s accusations. The voice screaming beside his head became like a siren, loud and shocking, but just a noise. Tom’s entire body was wracked with fear and grief and exhaustion, and the only words he could manage to string together were, “I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it.”

  Around dinnertime, when Kay announced to her two daughters that it was time to head back over to her parents’ home, she met the resistance she had expected from Tink and Kathy.

  “We wanna stay with Jamie and everybody else,” Tink stated emphatically.

  But their mother was just as emphatic. “Grandma Polly and Grandpa Art are worried too, guys,” she explained. “It’s not fair to leave them all alone either.”

  Both daughters nodded glumly, their Catholic sense of guilt predictably defeating their personal desires.

  “Maybe we can come back later on,” Kay said. “Besides, we have to talk about a few things.”

  Leaving Ginna’s was an emotional affair and it took the better part of a half an hour for Kay to drag her two daughters out to the driveway. They hugged and kissed everyone in the house countless times and promised to come back as soon as they could. It was Kathy’s turn to sit in the front seat, and for the first time that Kay could ever remember, Tink didn’t complain. She opened the back door and buckled herself in quietly. Kay backed out of the driveway and took a deep breath. She shifted to drive and started the car rolling as slowly as possible. It was only a five-minute drive to her parents’ home, but she had to draw it out. There were things she needed to discuss with her daughters in private. Tink leaned as far forward as she could within the constraints of the seat belt when her mother started to talk.

  “Okay guys, here’s what’s happening. Your father called a while ago to tell me that they’ve asked Tom to take a polygraph test — a lie detector,” she explained.

  Kathy didn’t think it was possible to feel any more stunned or distraught than she already did, but as her mother talked her head began to reel and she clutched the dashboard in front of her dizzily.

  “Why would they do that?” Tink asked.

  “I’m not sure exactly, but your father seemed to think that they will be coming home soon. The police told them that the polygraph was the last thing they would ask him to do today. He’ll probably be home after dinner sometime. But I have to tell you that, as a precaution, Sheila has been talking to a lawyer, a Mr. Frank Fabbri. We are probably going to hire this man to represent Tom.”

  “A lawyer?” Kathy asked. “Why would he need a lawyer? He hasn’t done anything wrong. This doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Unless they think he did something,” Tink said, giving up on the seat belt and unbuckling herself to bring her face in between her mother’s and her sister’s. “They don’t think that, Mom, do they? They can’t possibly think that.”

  Kay shook her head but couldn’t answer. She hadn’t cried in front of her daughters yet. She couldn’t cry in front of her daughters. She had to be strong for them.

  “Oh God, Mom,” Kathy said. “They don’t, do they?”

  Kay shook her head again, but the lump in her throat was too restrictive. She couldn’t speak. The girls both started to cry and Tink flopped back against the seat. Kay sped up a bit, wanting to get off the road now, needing to get home and park the car and hug her daughters.

  “It’s gonna be okay,” she managed to say.

  But Tink and Kathy had been hearing that phrase all day and it wasn’t okay. It was nowhere near okay. In fact nothing in the world had ever been less okay. Julie and Robin were gone, and with each passing hour, each passing minute, it seemed less and less likely that they would ever come back. And now Tom was at police headquarters taking a polygraph test and their mother was talking about lawyers. It was not going to be “okay.”

  “Mom, can you pull over?” Tink asked quietly from the backseat. “I think I’m gonna throw up again.”

  Meanwhile, in an office adjoining the homicide squad room, Gene was seated across a cluttered desk from the senior officer on duty that day, Lieutenant Steven Jacobsmeyer. Jacobsmeyer had called Gene into his office while Tom was down taking the polygraph test. Gene sat up straight, rigid in the chair, with his hands resting loosely on his knees. He was nodding solemnly at Jacobsmeyer while the lieutenant spoke.

  “It’s simply . . . impossible, Mr. Cummins. It is simply too fantastic to be true. Your son would have had to have fallen ninety feet from that bridge. Ninety feet, Mr. Cummins. I don’t have to tell you that there’s no way he fell from a height like that without sustaining more serious injuries. Not to mention the fact that the Coast Guard tells us the water speed at that particular section of the river is at least five knots. Come on, now, you’re a Navy man. Do the calculations. He simply could not have survived the ordeal he is describing. The Coast Guard also mentioned that the current in that stretch of river leads toward the Illinois bank. According to his story, he came out on the wrong bank.”

  Gene’s face was a mask of disbelief. His nostrils flared wildly while he tried to take in all the facts being thrown at him. He was a quick-minded individual — he always had been. And he was qualified to within a thesis paper of a doctorate as an engineer. No, he didn’t need to be told that a drop of ninety feet would likely result in death, that a drop of ninety feet would, at the very least, have broken a few bones.

  “Now I want to stress to you again that we do not suspect your son of actually committing these crimes himself. I don’t think he’s capable of murder any more than you do. But when you review the facts of the case, Mr. Cummins, your logical conclusion must be that something is amiss here. Something doesn’t add up. He’s not telling us the truth.”

  Jacobsmeyer picked up a paper clip from his desk and sat back in his swivel chair, fidgeting and watching Gene struggle with all this new information. Jacobsmeyer paused a few moments to allow it all to sink in.

  “When we spoke earlier, you mentioned that your son had a history of lying.”

  Jacobsmeyer let that sentence hang in the air for a moment as if expecting Gene to arrive at some sort of next logical step from it. Gene responded by looking at him blankly.

  “Lying about report cards and parties where the parents weren’t home,” Gene explained. “
That’s what I told you. All kids lie about that kind of stuff from time to time. This is a whole new ballpark. My son is not capable of this. He is a fine young man, a good young man. I can’t . . . I don’t . . .” Gene ran out of things to say.

  “Ninety feet, Mr. Cummins. Just think about that for a few minutes,” Jacobsmeyer replied tartly.

  Now Gene started to get annoyed. He didn’t need to think it over. He understood the implications. But this simply wasn’t a situation a parent could be prepared for. Okay, so ninety feet. Now what? My son’s a liar and a murderer? No. Gene shook his head.

  “I don’t know what you want me to say,” he said flatly.

  “I want you to say that you’ll help us.” Jacobsmeyer looked pleadingly at Gene and leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his army green desk blotter. “Mr. Cummins, we really need your help. We need to get at the truth here. If we have any hope of finding those girls, or finding any potential attackers, we need to know everything that really went down on that bridge last night. Maybe everything happened the way Tom says it did, up until the point where these guys pushed them off the bridge. Now suppose that somehow Tom got away, he escaped, and he’s not sure exactly what happened to the girls after he ran. Now once he gets away and he’s safe, he’s starts feeling ashamed that he abandoned his cousins and didn’t do more to help them. So naturally, he runs down to the water’s edge and splashes around, maybe looking for the girls. When he can’t find them, he goes up to the road to find help and he concocts this story along the way so he won’t look like a coward.

  “Or maybe it’s even simpler than that. Maybe he was so traumatized by what happened up there that he blacked out. He can’t remember what happened and he’s ashamed to tell us that. He needs to know that whatever the truth is, it’s okay. But we need to know the truth.”

  Gene was silent and his jaw worked back and forth while he listened. He stared at the checkered floor tiles in the small office and considered Jacobsmeyer’s hypotheses. The lieutenant was quiet for a few minutes, leaning back again and flicking the paper clip back and forth between the knuckles of his right hand. He swiveled ever so slightly in his chair.