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

by Jeanine Cummins

  “You are under arrest for two counts of first-degree murder,” Trevor explained.

  They were walking Gray toward the still-open front door and Eva followed the cluster of officers as closely as she could. Gray craned his neck around to look at her as they dragged him off.

  “Eva, baby, I don’t know what’s going on, but you’ve gotta call my mom for me. Tell her I need a lawyer,” he said.

  Eva nodded, unable to speak. She followed the knot of people all the way out the front door and onto the lawn where she stood, hollow-eyed, and watched them duck her boyfriend into the backseat of the waiting squad car. Her usually wan face had drained completely of color, and even her lips seemed marble-like in the moonlight. Gray didn’t look at her through the car window as they pulled away.

  Tom absolutely hated the idea of leaving the house to go to dinner, but Grandpa Gene had been insistent. Any relief Tom had felt earlier at the announcement that the police had a suspect in custody had faded back to rock-bottom depression during the six o’clock news. It was so hard to know who was telling the truth these days. Reporters were saying one thing, police were saying another, and both of these sources had proven themselves less than trustworthy in the last forty-eight hours.

  Tom was beside himself. He didn’t want to go to Red Lobster. He didn’t even want to go to the driveway. He didn’t want to worry about police, or jail, or if people thought he was a sick murderer. He wanted to miss Julie. He wanted to weep for Julie and Robin. He wanted to curl up under some of Grandma Polly’s handmade quilts on the floor in the den and cry himself to sleep. It was Grandpa Art’s usual selfless diplomacy that eventually convinced him, after his father’s prodding had failed.

  “You know, Tom,” Grandpa Art had said, “your grandparents came all the way up here from Florida so they could be here for you and show you their support. We’ve spent the whole week with you, and I think you owe it to them to give them a couple of hours. I know it’s not what you’re in the mood for. It’s probably not what they’re in the mood for either. That’s the whole problem, nobody’s in the mood for much of anything. But you have to eat anyway, and taking you to dinner is your grandpa’s way of showing you he loves you and he believes in you. You really oughtta go.”

  So he went, if somewhat grudgingly and nervously. He didn’t exactly expect to be able to hide — a table for seven can’t easily be tucked away into a dark corner. But neither did Tom expect to be seated, with his sisters, parents, and grandparents, at the large room’s long center table. He limped awkwardly through the restaurant, preceded by the hostess and followed by his family, and tried not to notice the several diners who stopped in mid-sentence or dropped their forks when they saw and recognized him. He averted his eyes, slid into his chair, and self-consciously opened his large menu to cover his face.

  Grandpa Gene hung his cane on the back of a nearby chair before seating himself beside his grandson. He placed his large, arthritis-ridden hand on Tom’s forearm and trained his piercing blue eyes on his grandson’s face. Tom allowed the menu to drop a couple of inches in order to meet his grandfather’s gaze. They didn’t speak, but somehow Tom drew strength from his grandfather’s face.

  Tink still hadn’t eaten anything and had no intention of starting tonight, which was probably why she hadn’t protested the choice of restaurant. She was the one member of the Cummins clan who didn’t love seafood. While the rest of the family ordered crab legs, shrimp cocktail, scallops, and fish, Tink ordered a burger and tried not to gag from the strong aroma of fish all around her. They chatted quietly while they waited for the food, but nobody really had much to say and the conversation was strained. When two steaming baskets of cheese bread arrived on the table, they were empty within moments; Tink only got one because Kay intercepted it for her. She placed it in the center of her daughter’s little saucer.

  “Why don’t you try that,” she said. “I think you’ll like it.” Tink studied the golden bun on her plate suspiciously. She had hardly swallowed a bite since Thursday night. She looked drawn and Kay was worried about her. Tink had to admit, though, that for the first time since her world had turned upside down, she was actually kind of hungry. She tore off a corner of the little bun and worked it slowly into her mouth. It was delicious. Within a minute she had eaten the entire thing. Kay looked at the empty plate in astonishment.

  “You want another one?” she said.

  Tink nodded, so Kay searched both baskets but came up empty-handed. She was undeterred. Her daughter was eating again. Tink wanted cheese bread? Then, by God, she would have cheese bread. Kay turned in her chair and scanned the room for their wayward waitress. She was nowhere to be found. But a waitress for the next table over came by with a tray of fresh cheese bread. Kay waited until she wasn’t looking and snagged one from the corner of the tray. She dropped it onto Tink’s plate with a triumphant little plop. Tink laughed at her mother.

  “Thanks, Mom,” she said.

  “Hey, where’s mine?” Kathy demanded, eyeing her sister’s cheese bread enviously.

  “You want one too?” Kay asked.

  Kathy nodded and then Tom piped up.

  “Me too, Mom,” he said.

  Kay grinned and followed the cheese bread waitress with her eyes. Her table was ready to order; she would have to set the tray down to take it. Sure enough, a moment later, the waitress turned and set the tray of cheese bread on a nearby tray stand, just a few feet from Kay’s chair. She wasted no time, but marched directly over and lifted the whole tray as if she were a waitress herself. She doled out bread until her whole family had had their fill, then returned the empty tray to its stand. The kids all giggled when the confused waitress turned back to her now-empty tray. It was a moment of genuine levity.

  “Mom, you’re such a hoodlum,” Kathy laughed after the waitress had passed out of earshot.

  “Yeah,” Tink agreed, munching her third cheese bread. “The Cummins family has turned into a regular hotbed of criminal activity.”

  “Watch out, Mom, they’re coming after you next. And the mother steals bread!” Tom said in mock horror. “It’s little wonder the son turned out the way he did.”

  It was strange for them all to be laughing and joking and eating at Red Lobster while Julie and Robin were still out there somewhere in the dark, unaccounted for. So the moment of lightness was a brief, if much-needed one. And soon they were paying for their laughter with those terrible, heavy feelings of guilt that survivors always feel. All of the briefly smiling faces at the table turned grave. The crumbs on Tink’s saucer were turning wet with the splatter of tears, and her appetite was gone again.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Gray sat in Tom’s vacated seat in interview room number two and stared blankly at the same whirring little tape recorder on the table in front of him. It had been a long night. Detective Pappas’s voice was first on the recording, announcing the time at a little past five o’clock on the morning of April 8, 1991. Pappas read Gray his rights and asked him about his involvement in the robbery, rape, and murder of the Kerry sisters and the assault of Tom Cummins. Gray’s voice was tired, deep, and monotonous, fully devoid of emotion as he began to tell his story.

  Brauer could barely conceal his disgust as he watched Gray coldly recite what he had done to the Kerry sisters in their last hours. He still wasn’t confessing to murder. He admitted to the rapes, but swore up and down he didn’t know how the two girls had wound up in the river. Nobody believed him for a minute, but a rape confession was better than no confession at all, so they had decided to go ahead with the taping. The confession lasted about forty minutes and concluded at ten minutes to six on Monday morning.

  After a terribly botched start, a start where bad hunches and an emotionally crippled witness had been their only leads, the St. Louis Homicide Division was finally back on track. They had obtained two taped confessions — one from Clemons and one from Gray. Today would be another big day — they had two more suspects to arrest. When Gray and Clemo
ns had learned that Richardson had been the one to point the finger, they had both eagerly returned the favor. Richardson had been promoted from witness to suspect.

  Just as Pappas and Brauer were wrapping up their interview with Gray, Gene Cummins was packing up the family van for the second time that week. This time there would be no sarcastically tearful good-byes from Julie and Robin, he realized, and he stopped in his work to take that in. His hands rested on Kathy’s suitcase, which he had been maneuvering into place between the others before tears had caused the whole scene to go blurry. He turned and sat on the van’s back bumper for a moment to compose himself.

  It was a crisp morning, and the dawn was beginning to light Fair Acres Road with a lilac hue as Gene turned back to his work. Tom emerged from the house behind him, hauling his suitcase and nodding to the cops in the squad car stationed across the street. They had been assigned to protect the Cummins family until they left St. Louis. The cops still weren’t sure exactly what they were dealing with in this bizarre case, but one thing was clear: the media had turned Tom into quite the unpopular figure. The police were concerned for his safety.

  Tom and his dad worked silently together while Blarney sniffed around in the grass seeking an appropriate spot for her morning activities. When the work was finished, they returned to the house. Inside, Gene sat down despondently at Grandma Polly’s little breakfast table and sipped his thick black coffee. It was time to get his family home; he knew that. His daughters needed to get back to school, and he was anxious to get Tom beyond the jurisdiction of this police department. Tom fully intended to cooperate with the ongoing investigation, but Gene saw that his son needed an emotional break before doing so. Tom needed time to grieve for his cousins. In Vietnam, Gene had learned that time to grieve was a luxury sorely missed if denied. It was a lesson he had hoped his children would never have to learn. But everything had changed this week. None of their lives would ever be the same, Gene knew, and the expression on his son’s face showed how much he had matured in the last few days. Still, they all felt reluctant to leave St. Louis, as if they thought that once they left, they might somehow be banished forever.

  Gene was startled from his reverie by the doorbell. His digital watch read just after six o’clock in the morning — a bit early for visitors, he thought, as he stood nervously to answer the door. The rest of his family was bustling around the house getting ready for the journey, but everyone froze when the doorbell rang. Tink and Kathy peeped out through the front curtains and recognized Ginna’s car as their father opened the door. Ginna stood motionless, cast in deep purple shadow on the step in front of him. She twisted a Kleenex round and round her fingers and her lips trembled as Gene opened the screen door and led her inside, into the warm light of the house.

  “I came to say good-bye,” she began, and tears joined her words, streaming loosely down her face.

  The three kids gathered around her and took turns hugging and kissing her. She held their hands in turn and looked each one in the eye as she spoke to them.

  “We’re going to have a funeral,” she announced. “Not yet of course, but when we find the girls. And I know you guys probably won’t be able to make it back out for that, but I want your input. You knew them so well, and we’re going to have music there — the girls’ favorite songs and musicians. Would you help me pick something out?”

  The three Cummins kids nodded silently and solemnly, their wet faces shining in the lamplight. They felt honored and once again awed that Ginna, at the time of her deepest sorrow, could be such a healing force for them.

  “Robin once told me what kind of funeral she wanted,” Ginna continued. “And I always thought she was being morbid, but now . . . now I feel so blessed that I know what she wants . . .”

  When Robin was about nine years old, her class at St. Jerome’s Elementary School had discussed death and dying one day. While most of the children had exhibited some initial fear or discomfort at the topic, Robin had embraced it. Even at that young age, she was at peace with the idea of her own death. That afternoon, she had gone home to Ginna and said, matter-of-factly, “Mom, I’m going to die young. When it happens, I want you to know what to do.”

  At the time, Ginna had been truly stunned. “Robin, don’t be so morbid!” she had snapped. She had grabbed her nine-year-old baby girl and held her tight, fighting the kind of tears that only a mother can truly understand — tears of terror.

  “Don’t cry, Mommy,” Robin had said. “I won’t talk about it again.”

  And for years Robin didn’t talk about it. But when she was fourteen, she spoke up again.

  “Now, Mom, I don’t want to upset you,” Robin began, “but I have to talk to you about something that is really important to me. Please just humor me. This will be hard for you to hear, but just listen to me this once and I promise I will never bring it up again.”

  The words that mother and daughter exchanged over those next few minutes had horrified Ginna, chilled her to the very bone. But she endured them for her daughter’s sake. She had no idea what a blessing they would be in just a few short years.

  During that conversation, Ginna had learned that Robin had a feeling — no, more than a feeling, a sense — that she was going to die young. And she was okay with it. She felt at ease and she wasn’t afraid to die. She hoped to make her mark on the world before she went and she hoped she would be remembered lovingly and often. Beyond that, she felt nothing formidable about her fate, certainly nothing scary.

  She asked Ginna to forbid anyone from wearing black to her funeral. She wanted bright colors and balloons. She wanted happy music, people who sang about the things Robin stood for and cared about. She wanted her friends to come and tell happy memories of her and blow soap bubbles. She didn’t want anyone to cry.

  When Robin finished talking, she hugged her mother and kissed her face, thanking her for listening. Now, five years later, Ginna stood in a circle with her brother’s family and tried to accept the fact that her beloved daughters were gone. They had been missing for three days, but Ginna still hadn’t really accepted it. After all, that conversation with Robin felt as if it had happened just yesterday. She could still feel Robin’s embrace, could still see the look of contentment and relief on her daughter’s young face once she had finally unburdened herself of those thoughts.

  Tink and Kathy fought tears while their aunt talked, but ended up sobbing while Ginna described Robin’s wishes. Ginna collected her nieces into her arms, hugging them and patting their hair as they all cried together. When they settled down, she said her good-byes to Kay and Gene. Finally she turned to Tom, who held her for a long time.

  Then she gave everyone a brave, tenuous smile before Gene walked her out. Five minutes later, the family was bundled silently into the big blue van. They all waved good-bye to Grandma Polly and Grandpa Art, who stood holding each other in front of their now-empty house. Gene signaled the squad car, which revved its engine and then pulled out in front, intent on its mission to escort the Cummins family safely out of St. Louis by way of the new Chain of Rocks Bridge.

  The kids sprawled out in the back of the van, Tink and Kathy sitting in the bucket seats and Tom occupying the long back bench. All of the window blinds were open, and the brightening light of the morning shone in. They reached the new Chain of Rocks Bridge within fifteen minutes, and crossed parallel to the old giant steel structure, which looked monstrous and black now.

  Tink leaned into the window, her breath making fog on the glass as they crossed.

  Gray’s friend Robert Troncalli was currently employed as a night receiver at the local Wal-Mart, and he worked hard unloading trucks while the surrounding countryside slept. He was used to sleeping late, and when his doorbell rang at about ten-thirty Monday morning, he was grumpy as he rose to answer it.

  Detective Walsh introduced himself and his partner Stuart to Troncalli and explained that Marlin Gray had been arrested for murder, and that they were there in hopes of searching the home for a
key piece of evidence. Troncalli found himself suddenly wide awake as he gave the detectives his permission to search. His mind was churning and he could hardly believe Marlin Gray had actually been arrested for the murders he had so flippantly claimed responsibility for in that very room just a few days earlier. Troncalli was stunned.

  Detective Stuart flipped open his notebook and began to ask him some simple questions about his relationship to the suspect while Walsh set about the business of searching for the missing green Swatch watch that Gray had hidden in Troncalli’s recliner. Troncalli watched, bewildered, while Walsh removed the cushions from all of his living-room furniture. The detective was down on his knees, elbow-deep in couch cushions, but he soon came up empty-handed. He replaced each cushion neatly when he was finished, but then picked up each piece of furniture to get a good look underneath as well.

  Troncalli tried to concentrate on the questions that Stuart was asking him, but he found himself distracted by Walsh’s activities. The search turned up nothing and, within a few minutes, the detectives left just as abruptly as they had appeared. Troncalli flopped clumsily into his favorite chair and fingered the card they had given him. It had a phone number on it and the detectives had encouraged him to call if he found anything unusual. He sat alone for a few minutes in his quiet little home and gazed around the room, as if looking for clues himself. On the other side of the now silent living room, Tom Cummins’s green Swatch watch was still stuck well into the recliner, having been grazed but missed by Walsh during his groping inspection.

  Troncalli related the whole strange incident to his wife Kendra when she came home later that day. He was still a bit bewildered by the detectives’ visit, and Kendra was equally shocked when she heard the news of Gray’s arrest.

  “And what did they want here? With us?” Kendra asked.

  “They were searching for some evidence,” Troncalli explained. “Supposedly Marlin stole a watch from that Cummins kid on the bridge. If they can find the watch, they can link him physically to the crime. I don’t know why they thought it might be here. I don’t even want to believe any of this.”