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

by Jeanine Cummins

  Fabbri smiled warmly at him and shook his head. Poor kid, he thought.

  “Well, I guess we should get cracking,” Fabbri began, looking to Tom for confirmation.

  Tom nodded and Fabbri began to explain the legal entanglements of the day. According to Missouri state law, he explained, the police had twenty hours from the time of the arrest in which to obtain warrants charging Tom with the two counts of first-degree murder against him. The police would present their evidence to St. Louis Circuit Attorney Nels Moss, and he would tell them whether or not their case was substantial enough to issue the warrants. As one of the city’s best prosecutors, and the man who usually took the high-profile homicide cases, Nels Moss was also the man who would eventually litigate this case. That was bad news for Tom, Fabbri explained, because he would obviously want an airtight file against the suspect.

  “I have no idea what kind of evidence the police will present, but if they’ve got anything at all worthwhile, Mr. Moss will want to see those warrants issued,” Fabbri explained.

  “Okay,” Tom said, nodding. “So what happens then?”

  “Well, after the warrants are issued, you will be held over until Monday for your initial appearance before the associate circuit judge. At that point, the judge will read the charges against you and discuss bail. Because murder one is a capital offense, you will likely not be offered bail. So, Tom, what I need you to do is start trying to get used to the idea that you may be in here for a little while. The trial could be a year or more away and you could very well be in jail until then. I know that this is an awful lot to take in, but this is your task today. I really need you to start getting used to that idea so that we can move on and become a productive team. It’s not gonna be easy.”

  Tom folded his hands in front of him, and the calm that had accompanied his sleep fled from him. He went cold while Fabbri’s voice came through the metal screen in front of him. He imagined he could feel the calm slipping from his head, sliding down his body, seeping squishily into his shoes and then sinking into a free-rolling puddle on the floor that would leave him and escape from the jail without him. His hands were freezing and trembling now and his toes felt cold and rigid in his shoes, but the rest of his body was hot and feverish.

  “How’s the search going?” Tom asked abruptly.

  “Pardon?”

  “My cousins? Have they found any trace of Julie or Robin?” Tom asked with growing desperation.

  “I’m sorry, Tom.” Fabbri shook his head.

  “It’s just that,” Tom spluttered and his face grew red with shame at the pure selfishness of what he was about to articulate, “just that . . . if they found the girls. If one of them survived, they would tell them, I’d be . . .”

  Tom’s voice trailed off and he brought his hand up to cover his face.

  “Oh God,” he said quietly and the first tears of the day slid down his face.

  Tink and Kathy wanted to go to Ginna’s house and didn’t really understand why they weren’t allowed. They didn’t understand the tension that had infected their family the instant that Tom was accused of murdering Julie and Robin. Gene and Kay were both in agreement that their presence at Ginna’s might be problematic — for Rick and for anyone else who didn’t know Tom well, who might put some stock in the allegations. So for Ginna’s sake, in an effort to be considerate in a monumentally delicate situation, they stayed away. Instead, all of the troops of aunts and uncles and cousins came visiting Fair Acres Road in shifts.

  But Tink and Kathy weren’t pacified by the brief and constant visits. They wanted to be with Jamie and Ginna — they wanted to be there whenever news of a discovery came in. And with the day’s growing sunshine, everyone was busily hoping for some kind of discovery. There had been an anonymous call to one of the local news stations with a tip that someone had indeed seen two women on the river’s Mozentine Island, which is not far south of the Chain of Rocks Bridge. The police warned the family not to get their hopes up, that legitimate tips usually came to the police department rather than through the news media. But at this point, hope was the only thing keeping the family afloat, so they jumped on the rumor. Privately, many members of those two households found quiet corners in which to kneel down and cross their hands in front of them and whisper fervent prayers over those rumors.

  The hours passed like a kind of sickly, ticking syrup. Faces and voices passed in and out, back and forth, between the two houses, but for the most part, they didn’t hear or see each other. They just waited. Petite Drive to Fair Acres Road and back again. Card game at the coffee table to throwing up in the bathroom and back again. Nintendo to the hourly no-news update and back again.

  And everyone tried desperately not to notice the absence of the two lively, sparkly voices — those two voices that usually laughed and teased and preached and scolded and somehow made everything light and right.

  Across town at police headquarters, Nels Moss sat with his legs crossed at the knee, perusing the open file folder in front of him. Moss looked young for his age, despite his white hair and the pipe that often hung from the corner of his mouth. At forty-eight, he was in good physical shape and kept his white beard and moustache neatly trimmed. He looked like an academic, and indeed, he had the sharp reputation to match. The Missouri Bar Association rated Moss as having very high to preeminent legal ability and very high ethical standards. Within the St. Louis Police Department, he had earned the highest level of respect along with the nickname “Boss Moss.” Sergeant Nichols and Detective Richard Trevor were silent at the table across from him, waiting for him to speak. They felt confident that he would agree to the warrants they were seeking, but they knew better than to rush him.

  “Okay, so what have you got, really?” Moss asked, looking Nichols directly in the eye as he spoke.

  “Well,” Nichols began, “We don’t really have any physical evidence per se, but we did obtain a confession.”

  “Oh well, that should be plenty,” Moss said. “Is it written or videotaped?”

  “Well, neither actually.”

  “You do have it on audio tape then,” Moss prompted.

  Nichols shook his head and glanced at the frowning Trevor. “Uh. Not exactly,” he said.

  “Well, then you don’t have a confession,” Moss snapped. “What exactly was the nature of the statement?”

  “Well . . .” Nichols hung his head a bit like a scolded child as he truthfully related the scenario that had been dubbed Tom’s confession. “He said, ‘If you say I did it, then fine. I did it.’ ”

  Moss folded his arms sternly in front of him while he listened, and when Nichols was finished speaking the prosecutor slid the closed manila folder across the table and stood to go.

  “You’ve got no evidence,” he said. “No confession, no bodies, no witnesses . . . No evidence. Let the kid go. In the meantime, I suggest you step up your search for those two girls. Come back to me when you have something I can work with.”

  Tink still had Julie’s red bandana tied around her right wrist. She was lying in her grandfather’s recliner, listening to Simon and Garfunkel on her Walkman and trying not to feel hollow. “Bridge over Troubled Water” was playing and Tink was just considering turning it off, the irony being a bit too heavy for the moment, when the call came in. In the instant that the phone rang, the house ground to a halt so completely that it seemed to have been spinning before that moment. Outside, every bird in every tree on Fair Acres Road shut its beak and drew its breath in, waiting. Kids’ wagon wheels halted in mid-turn, and water from the sprinkler next door hung suspended in midair as the world stopped.

  Tink rolled her body over the arm of the recliner and stumbled toward the phone, but as she rounded the corner, her father was already there in front of her with the receiver to his ear. There was no sound. Her father’s lips were moving, but there was no sound. Kathy and Kay were there too now, and they all clasped each other. The prayers that flew up from that kitchen at that moment seemed the fastest, most
ardent, and most frantic prayers ever prayed.

  The first sound was the slow-motion click as Gene dropped the receiver back into its cradle. His expression was impossible, unreadable. He looked sick and terrified and stunned all at once. And then he spoke.

  “He’s out!” Gene shouted and the tears that came loose from his eyes were tears of joy and relief. He shook his head, unable to believe the words, even as they came out of his own mouth.

  “They’re letting him go. The prosecutor took the warrants under advisement — said they have no evidence.”

  Gene held his wife’s face in his hands now, and Kay was unable to speak, her lips and face a trembling mess of relief. Tink covered her head with her hands and wept, looking up at the ceiling and crying, “Thank you, thank you,” until Kathy tackled her and the two sisters fell onto the floor together in a happy, blubbering heap.

  Tom was the last to learn of his own freedom, and what he thought was his first of many afternoons in jail already felt like an eternity. He had never been claustrophobic before, but the green metal room had long grown to feel like a tiny tin box, and he a sardine crammed into it. He had been pacing wildly, wrestling with the idea of staying in this place and clearly losing the battle. He breathed as deeply as he could and stretched his arms and legs constantly, as if to reassure himself that he still had space enough to do those things. But it didn’t help.

  By lunchtime he was no closer to accepting his fate than he had been when Fabbri suggested the idea to him earlier that morning. When the grumpy-looking guard came to deliver the lunch of franks and beans and the obligatory paper cup of lukewarm water to wash it down, Tom wished he were the janitor from earlier that morning. At least that man had looked like someone with whom he could strike up a conversation. Tom looked distastefully at the paper cup as the guard maneuvered it gingerly through the bars and placed it on the stone floor inside the cell.

  “Any chance I can get a Coke, or at least maybe a glass of ice?”

  Tom was unaccustomed to beginning a day without any caffeine whatsoever, and his head was beginning to pound.

  “No glass allowed — suicide watch,” the guard explained gruffly.

  He didn’t seem to have an excuse readily available regarding the requests for Coke or ice, but Tom’s reservoir of patient conversation had dried up anyway. He lifted the limp paper plate and began silently chewing his franks and beans. The guard left without another word. Tom finished the food in a matter of minutes and when it was gone, he wished he had drawn the eating process out a bit more. Eating was something to do and it killed time. Now that the meal was over, Tom was once again alone with his thoughts.

  He dozed sporadically on the green metal shelf with no concept of how quickly or slowly the time was passing. Each time he dozed off and woke up again, he felt as if an entire night had passed. He would wake with a start, sit up abruptly, and swing his legs over the edge of the shelf, half hoping to see the friendly janitor standing nearby.

  But in the small corner of his mind that was still in touch with reality, Tom knew that it must still be only early afternoon. There had been no dinner delivered, he reasoned. Tom’s parents had always had a habit of equating the passage of time with the strictly scheduled intake of food, a habit that had always irritated him and his sisters. How strange, he thought, that the very same routine was like a lifeline to him now. But beyond that, Tom was also aware that before the dinner delivery would come a delivery of a different kind: the news of his warrants. The dread that had spread over him in a panic that morning had settled well into his bones now. And although he was more terrified than ever, he almost longed for the delivery. He needed the finality of the announcement and he wanted to get it over with. His stomach lurched when he thought of it so he tried to turn his mind to other things.

  In a few moments he was asleep again and dreaming of driving in the Hornet with Julie, except in the dream the car was a convertible and strips of fuzzy fabric didn’t hang down to clutter his ears. There was no floor in the car either, and Tom and Julie had to use their feet, Flintstones-style, to get the car to stop and go. There was no radio, but it didn’t matter because Robin was singing loudly in the backseat and the three of them were laughing as the wind whipped through their hair and they rolled happily in their rickety car across the empty, sunny Old Chain of Rocks Bridge . . .

  The jarring sound of keys and footsteps awakened Tom this time, and he was momentarily confused by the dream. He stood and stretched as the footsteps grew closer, and when the guard appeared at the cell he opened the gate without a word. He jerked his head at Tom in a “follow me” gesture, and Tom fell in step with him. The hazy, happy dream had melted from his consciousness upon wakening, and the dread that replaced it was stronger than ever in contrast. Tom followed the guard silently for a few moments before venturing a few words of cautious inquiry.

  “Is my lawyer here to see me?” he asked.

  “Nope,” the guard responded, without offering anything further.

  “Well, what’s happening then? Is this something to do with the warrants?”

  “In a way, yes,” the guard answered. “The prosecuting attorney decided to take the warrants under advisement.”

  Tom didn’t understand what this meant. He waited for the guard to explain further.

  “You’re being let go,” the guard said, without attempting to mask his disgust.

  Tom froze. “Let go?” he said, incredulously.

  “Yup,” the guard responded. “Let go.”

  Tom’s face broke into a contorted smile and his breath failed to come. His face turned red while his breath faltered and when he finally gasped for air, a giant choke escaped him. His head spun and his body felt light and twisted, as if he were growing and stretching visibly there beside the guard in the florescent hallway light. Tom thought he would fall to his knees and crack the linoleum tiles beneath him with the thunderous drop. He almost reached out to the guard for physical support, but stopped himself in time and leaned instead against the thick painted brick of the corridor wall. He was laughing and crying simultaneously now, and his hands covered his face while he tried to hold himself upright.

  “Oh God,” he cried. “Thank you thank you thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me,” the disgusted guard spat.

  Tom did his best to compose himself and straighten his body to his full height. “I wasn’t,” he answered, with all the false animosity he could muster. He held his chin up higher than he had ever held it before, he was sure, but allowed the tears to remain in the trails they had cut in his cheeks. He would make no apologies now. He was entitled to these tears.

  “Get me the hell outta here then,” was all he said.

  Tom was released from jail without fanfare. The guard led him down countless identical hallways to another small Plexiglas window where he was given some paperwork to fill out. When he was finished with that, they traded him the paperwork for his shoelaces and belt and then opened the gate that separated the jail wing from the rest of the building. Tom walked through the gate alone and the guard locked himself back inside, turned, and strolled away down the long hallway.

  Tom stood for a few brief moments outside the locked gate and weighed his options. He had presumed that either Frank Fabbri or his parents, or maybe even a whole party of family members, would be there to greet him for the moment of release. But instead he found himself standing alone outside a locked gate in what appeared to be some kind of a small waiting room, unsure which way would even lead him out of the building. The sparse seats in the room were mostly empty, but one was occupied by an elderly black man who looked as if he was waiting for someone. The gentleman had smile lines etched deeply into his face and he held a softpack of menthol cigarettes in his hands, turning them over and over, fidgeting. Tom approached him.

  “Excuse me, do you mind if I bum one of those?” Tom asked, pointing to the packet.

  The man looked up and smiled at Tom, exhibiting all of his laugh lines in t
heir deepest, most majestic form.

  “Son,” he responded, “you look like you could use the whole pack.”

  He laughed a deep and raspy smoker’s laugh and handed the half-full pack of cigarettes to Tom, and then offered his hand for a handshake.

  “Thank you, sir,” Tom stammered.

  He shook the proffered hand and turned quickly in an effort to spare the man a display of grateful tears. That man would never know the faith he had helped to restore in that brief moment. After everything, I can still expect to be surprised by the kindness of a total stranger, Tom thought, recognizing a very Julie-like and comforting naïveté in the notion.

  As Tom left the little waiting room, a sense of urgency began to grow in him. This building was full of people who had clearly defined themselves as his enemies, and he felt quite sure that those people wouldn’t be too happy when they got wind of his release. Tom didn’t want to stick around and give them further opportunities to express their misplaced anger. He briefly thought of his four attackers, how two of them had been in that building, examining him from behind that two-way mirror just the day before. Tom still didn’t know the degree of the police deception — he didn’t know that those two men had never set foot in the building. So his panic at the thought of running into them was very real and terrifying.

  He had to get out of there and he had to do it fast. He followed hallway after hallway toward what he thought was the front of the building until he spotted natural light streaming through a glass door. He headed for the door, breaking into a trot as he did so and glancing nervously over his shoulder to check if he was being followed. There were a few people milling around or talking quietly to one another, but no one seemed to be paying him any notice. He was relieved, but didn’t stop jogging when he got to the door. Instead he flung it open and broke into a dead run, ignoring the sharp pain in his hip and the persistent aches in the rest of his body. He hadn’t noticed the pains so vividly before, when he had been confined and all his movements slow and constricted.