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

by Jeanine Cummins

  “Grand theft auto,” the clerk declared loudly, looking over the rims of his glasses before launching into a legal description of the charge.

  “Lucky bastard,” Tom muttered under his breath.

  The kid seated beside him overheard Tom’s little exclamation and glanced up nervously. He edged himself away on the narrow bench, despite Tom’s attempt at a reassuring smile. The absurdity of the situation was not lost on Tom. Here he was, a nineteen-year-old fireman and Eagle Scout who had never been in any serious trouble in his life, envying a hoodlum who was charged with grand theft auto. Tom chuckled, causing his bench companion to slide even further away from him, and then he gave up, tipping his head back against the brick wall behind him.

  When his name was called about half an hour later, Tom opened his eyes to find that he and the clerk in the window were alone in the room. There were guards outside, he was sure, but his criminal companions were gone. Tom wondered vaguely if they would spend the night in jail or if they had been released on bail already. He seated himself heavily across the fortified counter from the obviously disapproving clerk. The man on the other side cleared his throat and started his list of questions. Tom answered them mindlessly and only half listened while the man explained the two charges of first-degree murder, and the likelihood that Tom would not be offered bail.

  The guard who came to collect Tom from the office was the same one who had escorted him from his cell, and it was no stretch to say that Tom was delighted to see him. He needed sleep, for the release as much as the rest, and he was anxious to get back to his semi-quiet cell and his PCP-addled neighbor. When they reached the guard station in the center of the building, Tom thought it was heavily manned, especially for that time of night. He didn’t remember having passed it on the way to the little office, but he had been so sleepy, he supposed that they could have walked through a minefield without his noticing. The guard who was escorting him paused at the station, where four or five of his coworkers were seated at two round tables. There were a deck of cards, several magazines, and a newspaper on one of the tables, but the graveyard-shift officers looked bored nonetheless.

  “Go and stand right over there against that wall,” Tom’s guard instructed him.

  Tom turned and walked sleepily toward the wall, feeling every eye in the room bore into his back as he did so. When he reached the thick painted brick, he leaned his back against it and brought one heel up under his bottom for support. He crossed his arms in front of him and unthinkingly inspected his shoe. He didn’t dare look any of these cops in the face, give them ammunition for their hostility. But neither did he dare to close his eyes, fall asleep standing up, and risk falling over. So he examined his shoe, and when that proved useless in keeping him alert, he started counting floor tiles.

  “Ain’t you the big city boy that darn near fooled all us silly old farmers with your wacky story? The one’s gonna kill yerself tonight?” one of the seated officers jeered in a ridiculously mock-hick accent.

  Tom yawned and continued counting.

  “What’s wrong, sleepyhead?” one of the other cops joined in. “Did you have a nightmare or something?”

  Tom smiled wryly in spite of himself. A nightmare, he thought. You have no fucking idea.

  Tom stood propping the wall up like that for several minutes while the officers taunted him, but their insults didn’t really bother him. He remembered Fabbri telling him not to mutter a single word, not even in his own defense, and that thought lent Tom strength and dignity. It was easy to keep quiet, especially when he saw that his silence was causing them to lose interest in tormenting him. Still, Tom had counted every floor tile in the room and every brick in the wall opposite him, and had picked every remaining bit of sand and river sludge from under his fingernails before his guard began to saunter down the hallway without him. He turned and called over his shoulder to Tom, slapping his thigh as if he was summoning a dog.

  “Here, boy,” he called. “Come on, boy, let’s go. That’s a good boy.”

  The officers gathered at the two tables laughed heartily at this parting shot and one of them wished Tom “good luck with the whole suicide thing.”

  Tom almost thanked him, but thought better of it and kept his mouth shut. He walked between the two tables and past the night officers as if they were invisible. He didn’t cry until he was locked into his cell, alone again, and the glaring overhead bulb was dimmed for the last time that night.

  In the middle of the night, while Tom suffered the harassment of the guards, Jamie sat on her living-room couch with her legs folded compactly under her body, her fingers entangled and busy with a blob of pink yarn. The quiet that had been gathering all day in the house had become downright eerie with the fall of night. Jacquie sat beside her young niece with her own tangle of pink yarn while Jamie patiently and perfectly instructed her aunt in the intricacies of “finger crocheting.”

  “Is there anything you don’t know how to do?” Jacquie asked admiringly.

  Jamie smiled and shrugged.

  Ginna and her friend Marianne had been chatting at the kitchen table ever since Ginna and Jamie had returned from their brief visit to Gene and his family. She sat shaking her head. The whole thing was so surreal, so bizarre, that she still couldn’t even seem to line up the facts in her head. A few blocks away, her brother Gene was sitting in a darkened house, much like this one, without his only son. Tommy was in jail. And here she sat in her own vacant kitchen, the light over the stove providing the room’s only illumination, without her daughters. Julie and Robin still weren’t home.

  With each passing hour, different scenarios presented themselves. Maybe they made it to Mozentine Island in the middle of the river and are unable to swim ashore. Maybe they were too embarrassed to walk naked in the daylight and seek help. Now that it’s dark — maybe they will make their way to a phone.

  But these possibilities grew less and less likely with each tick of the clock. Maybe they’re unconscious on the riverbank somewhere, or they have amnesia. Maybe they broke their legs in the fall and are unable to walk for help.

  Anything, no matter how horrible or far-fetched, was better than the looming truth: Julie and Robin were dead. They had been brutalized and murdered and they were never coming back.

  “At least they were together,” Ginna kept saying. “They’ll be okay because they’re together.”

  Nobody on Petite Drive slept that night. Eventually Jamie passed out on the couch. Periodically she’d awaken and occupy herself with one of her crafts or video games until she exhausted herself and passed out again. Ginna and Marianne hardly moved from the kitchen table. Some time in the middle of the night, Jacquie retired to the basement for a little while and tried to sleep on the mattress that had been the old standby for any of the various friends in need of a place to stay who Robin habitually brought home. Jacquie tossed and turned on it for an hour or two and then crept back up the steps, not altogether surprised to see Ginna still camped out at the kitchen table.

  “Can’t sleep, honey?” Ginna asked.

  Jacquie shook her head. Ginna was the oldest girl in the Cummins family and Jacquie was the youngest. There were almost twenty years between them, and Ginna was more like a mother to Jacquie than a sister. Right now it was exactly what they both needed. Ginna needed to pamper and nurture somebody, to be a mom. And Jacquie, who was emotionally and physically exhausted, welcomed the doting.

  “Milk and cookies,” Ginna announced. “The combination of the milk and sugar always makes me sleepy. That’s what you need. A good dose of milk and cookies.”

  She got up and fetched a saucer, filled it with cookies, and set it down in front of her baby sister with a tall glass of cold milk.

  “Thanks,” Jacquie said, and did her best to fake a smile for Ginna.

  The den on Fair Acres Road was crowded with sleeping figures, or at least prone and fitful ones trying to sleep. The back bedroom where Tink and Kathy had been sleeping all week had been transformed in
to the stuff of nightmares for the two girls. For them, that room had been the launching point for this entire ordeal, and neither of them had even entertained the idea of trying to sleep in there tonight, or ever again for that matter. So their parents had pulled the mattress off of the foldout couch and onto the floor and then replaced the couch’s exterior trappings. The two sisters lay head to toe on the couch while their parents sprawled on the mattress beneath them, and Blarney snuffled around from one body to the next, eventually curling up in a warm place beside Gene. But nobody really slept. Sure, there were moments of unconsciousness, but they were snatched and interrupted in cycles. Everyone had the same nightmare and they all took turns waking up in cold sweats, and they all took turns comforting each other.

  Near dawn, Tink and Kathy awoke to find their mother sitting cross-legged in the middle of the mattress in her thin silk nightgown. Her hands covered her face and she rocked back and forth slowly. Her cry was so high and so sharp that it was soundless, but her breath somehow pierced the air nonetheless. Their father knelt in front of her with his arms helplessly around her shoulders, trying in vain to comfort her. The pink blush of reluctant dawn was creeping to the windows, and the room was thick with grief. The first night of their new life was over.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Tom was thirsty when he woke up, and the man who was standing over him, bent at the waist and peering down into his face, was holding a paper cup of water.

  “Breakfast,” the man said and almost smiled.

  He was an older fellow and dressed like a janitor, Tom thought. Whether he was or not, he looked like somebody’s grandfather and his face was a kind one. Tom propped himself up on his elbows and slowly sat up, unfolding his joints from the metal shelf and trying to gauge the various aches and pains.

  The man took a step back to give Tom some room to stretch before handing him the paper cup and a Hostess sticky bun, still wrapped in the cellophane. Tom thanked him and this time the man did smile properly. He nodded his head and shuffled wordlessly out the door, closing and locking it behind him.

  Tom had no idea what time it was, but he felt somewhat refreshed by the sleep. It was impossible to read the hour by the scanty natural light provided by the room’s single high window, and his watch was gone — taken by one of the four men who should be sitting there, eating a Hostess sticky bun and rinsing it down with a cup of lukewarm tap water. He supposed that if the four guys hadn’t stolen his watch, the police would have taken it from him anyway, along with his belt and his shoelaces, the night before, so from that point of view it was really no major loss.

  Tom finished the bun and had nowhere to throw the wrapper so he just left it crumpled on the shelf beside him. There was no breeze to stir it and it stuck in place on the shelf as if it had grown roots there. Tom crumpled it into a tighter ball and then flicked it onto the floor.

  He swallowed the last of the lukewarm water and was still thirsty, so he called for a guard but no one came. He called every couple of seconds for a few minutes, but still nobody showed up.

  Tom stood up from the green metal shelf and walked to the green metal sink mounted on the back wall of his cell. He turned the tap’s one squeaky knob and murky lukewarm and yellowish water spewed out. He set the cup on the edge of the sink and turned the knob back off. I wouldn’t even wash my hands in that water, he thought.

  So he went to use the green metal seatless commode instead. When he was finished there, he returned to his green metal shelf and then opted for a change of scenery and switched to a different metal shelf instead. Just as he was beginning to wonder how he could spend another second alone in the cell without losing his mind, he heard footsteps approaching.

  “Your lawyer’s here to see you,” the guard announced as he approached Tom’s cell and lifted his heavy key ring to unlock the gate.

  The guy wasn’t exactly friendly, but neither did he seem to possess the downright animosity that Tom had experienced the night before. It was a relief, and Tom’s mood lifted a bit as he stepped out of his cell and followed the not-vicious guard down the fluorescent-lit corridor toward Fabbri. How vastly things can change in a day and a half, Tom thought. My God, the things I am now thankful for.

  On Fair Acres Road, the atmosphere was at its lowest yet. There was absolutely nothing the family could do now. Today they played the waiting game. Tink and Kathy both needed to shower, but the prospect of spending any chunk of minutes alone with their thoughts terrified them both into procrastination, so they resumed their places on the couch with their worn deck of cards instead. Gene and Kay paced and stalked around the house like caged wild animals while Grandma Polly puttered around her kitchen, hoping that someone would feel up to eating. Grandpa Art had looked from his watch to the clock to his watch to the clock to his watch until finally, at about eight-thirty, he could stand it no longer.

  “I’m going for a drive,” he announced to his wife, before slinging his keys into his jacket pocket and tottering out the door.

  “Well where’re you going, Art?” Grandma Polly asked from where she had appeared in the kitchen doorway with a frying pan in her hand.

  But he was gone and the door was already closed behind him. When he returned about an hour later, he secretly carried the deed to his own house. Like Grandpa Gene, he was determined to provide whatever financial support his grandson needed.

  The front page headline of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch on the morning of Saturday, April 6, 1991 read “Two Sisters Missing in N. County: Police Hold Cousin After Story of Attack.” Julie and Robin looked beautiful on the front page, but their pictures were dwarfed beside a huge close-up photograph of one of the bridge’s rusty gaping manholes. The police were quoted repeatedly in the article, alleging that Tom Cummins had made a sexual advance toward his cousin Julie, and that she had fallen off the bridge during an ensuing struggle. Her sister Robin had fallen too, they explained, trying to help her.

  On page eight, where the story continued, there was a large scenic photo of the bridge, and a snapshot of one of the search parties in its boat. The article briefly described the ongoing search efforts for the girls by the U.S. Coast Guard, the St. Louis Police Department, and various rescue teams from both banks. Tom was described as having “made incriminating statements about the incident.” And Julie and Robin were described as “lovely girls and very excellent students.” At the bottom of the article there was also a picture of one of the detectives, holding a flashlight that had been found on the bridge. The caption read, “Police believe the owner of this flashlight may have been a witness to the incident. The flashlight has HORN 1 etched into it.”

  The police had Antonio Richardson’s missing flashlight.

  Across town, on Edgewood Avenue, not far from the apartment where Richardson lived, the original owner of the mysterious HORN 1 flashlight was reading the paper, and he was baffled. Ron Whitehorn, a bus driver and former police officer, recognized his missing flashlight as the pivotal piece of evidence in the murder investigation.

  Ron’s daughter Stephanie and her brother had invited a few people over one evening in March while their parents were out. Antonio Richardson had been among them; Antonio Richardson had stolen the flashlight.

  Ron Whitehorn immediately phoned the police with the information and identified Antonio Richardson as the potential “witness” they had been seeking since Friday.

  At police headquarters, the unwashed Tom Cummins sat feeling rather itchy as he stared through the smudged and filthy screen at his impeccably dressed lawyer. The room was tiny and Tom sat on a swivel stool bolted to the floor like the ones in old greasy-spoon diners. There were none of those snazzy phones like they had on Miami Vice, Tom noticed, and was secretly relieved. He felt criminal enough in there without having to talk to people in the real world on a phone when he was looking right at them.

  “Morning,” Fabbri said, and offered Tom a smile.

  “Morning.” Tom smiled back, but Fabbri’s was more genuine.

&n
bsp; Fabbri wouldn’t bother asking the boy how he was doing — that was a question that simply invited disaster. Fabbri had learned well the dos and don’ts of jailhouse etiquette, and what he was here to tell Tom certainly wouldn’t make the young man feel any better, so there was no point wasting time with chitchat.

  “I’m here to explain today’s procedure to you,” Fabbri began. “I didn’t want to get into all this last night because you were exhausted and needed to sleep. But now that you’ve gotten some rest, it’s time you understood what’s happening.”

  Tom nodded on the other side of the smudgy screen.

  “You know, they came for me last night like you told me they would,” he blurted.

  “You mean they were asking you questions and stuff, like the guys before?”

  “Yeah and just kinda jeering me and being real assholes,” Tom further explained.

  “And you didn’t say a word to them, right?” Fabbri’s blue eyes were wide, his eyebrows up, arched in an expression of concern.

  “Right,” Tom answered, almost proudly.

  “Great.” Fabbri smiled, relieved. “Good job.”

  The little disclosure had been Tom’s way of thanking Fabbri. By telling him that things had happened exactly as he had predicted, and that Tom had followed his sage advice, Tom was trying to express his gratitude. There was so much more he wanted to say before they launched into all of the legal drama and Tom’s terrible future, but he was at a loss. He wanted to tell Fabbri thank you for believing him, thank you for taking him out of that nightmare yesterday, thank you for saving him. He wanted to tell Fabbri that he would do anything the man suggested, because he had saved his life the day before and Tom would trust him to save his life again at every turn from that point forward. But in the scrubbed morning light, Fabbri looked like a movie lawyer in an Armani suit and Tom sat shyly in his filthy clothes, picking at the corner of the metal screen in front of him.