The Entirely Fabricated Story of Lizzie Nickerson

Chapter 5

Okay, so we find ourselves at the police station early one morning but this may be somewhat misleading. If this were the usual police procedural, at least one of these officers would have an Irish surname, and/or a drinking problem, or a divorce hanging over their head. You won't find a single cop in this story named O'Malley or McCarthy or Murphy swilling pints of Bushmills for breakfast. No way. It's not going to happen. You'll see.

So anyway...

Frazier Stoudemire wore a broad smile when he read the police report about the apprehension of one Vinny Scarpino who confessed to the murder of Frederick Gibbs. As it turned out, a doorbell camera on the front door of the building across the street captured the event nearly in its entirety. The footage showed Vinny wearing a Cincinnati Reds baseball cap and skulking along the sidewalk across the street from the apartment building of Frederick Gibbs who, at the time, was only a few minutes from being murdered.

Looking up toward the second floor, Vinny crept across the street, onto the porch and, while attempting to gain entrance to the building, was startled when Mr. Gibbs opened the door. The rest, as they say, is history and the rest was regrettably brief for the dearly departed nosey Frederick Gibbs.

It seems wholly appropriate to make reference here to the old saying, 'Curiosity killed the cat' but it would probably ruin the flow of the story.

Vinny Scarpino and his roommate had grown tired of the old man in the window of the second-floor apartment across the street watching the comings and goings of their customers. They worried that during some spell of insomnia, the old geezer might summon the authorities. And due to the variety of intoxicants Vinny smoked, his paranoia ran wild. So, unfortunately for Mr. Gibbs, the delusional Vinny decided to take matters into his own trembling hands.

Frazier Stoudemire marveled at that mysterious girl who sat on the fifth step overlooking the body of the deceased. She was right about almost every aspect of the case. How it happened, why it happened, and even where to find the likely culprit who committed the murder.

Mitch Tarpick stood firm in his assertion that Lizzie Nickerson had made lucky guesses and nothing more. He even dragged out the tired cliche, 'Even a broken clock is right twice a day.' According to Tarpick, the girl was obviously an oddball if not entirely unstable, and was probably on all sorts of medication. "She moved like a chimpanzee," he said. "Like her arms were too long and her hips too narrow." He made it clear that his partner was making far too much of the series of odd coincidences and didn't care to hear one more word about Lizzie Nickerson.

When Officer Delvin Ott turned over his notes to be included in the case file, he shook his big head and scratched his temple with a thick finger, and said to the detectives, "How 'bout that Lizzie girl? Wow! Am I right?"

Tarpick banged his fist on the desk and stormed away, muttering something that sounded like "dipshits." He may have said something about dips and chips, but Mitch wasn't known as a snacker and he was already sufficiently salty.

Delvin Ott turned to Frazier with a look that said, "What is up with that guy?" Stoudemire could only shrug. During his seven-year partnership with Mitch Tarpick, suffering through hundreds of eight-hour shifts, he was often asked, "How do you do it?" and "Don't you ever want to murder the guy?" Stoudemire's standard response was, "I try not to think about it too much."

During the next few days, as Frazier Stoudemire caught up on his paperwork, his thoughts drifted back to that girl seated on the fifth step of the apartment building. In his spare time, he did some off-the-clock research, trying to learn anything he could about Lizzie Nickerson. There were wedding announcements for Elizabeth Nickerson, Facebook, and Ancestry listings, and even a few obituaries. None matched the mysterious girl swaddled in her hoodie.

When he mentioned her to his wife over dinner one evening, he described Lizzie Nickerson as a talkative child with the intellect of an adult, an incredibly intelligent adult who would probably kick ass on TV game shows like Jeopardy. It would be impolite to utter the phrase 'kick-ass' at the family dinner table so he did not but it was implied. His wife gave him a knowing look and then asked him to pass the broccoli.

Since he last saw the girl, Frazier had several restless nights. Something wasn't sitting quite right, and it wasn't entirely attributable to that odd Mediterranean dish he'd ordered when he was feeling particularly adventuresome.

One night, he had a dream that his wife had asked him to drive her to Target. In the dream, his wife looked almost identical to the man who stocked the vending machines at work. While he sat in the parking lot waiting for her return, Frazier watched three kids on skateboards performing dangerous stunts. As they gradually moved closer to his car, he realized that they weren't kids but penguins, impolite, inconsiderate penguins that cursed non-stop and made obscene gestures to people who hurried into Target to avoid confrontation.

The penguin dream had absolutely nothing to do with Lizzie Nickerson other than to illustrate the state of Frazier Stoudemire's troubled mind. In the shower the next morning, he reached the conclusion that he would likely never enjoy a good night's sleep until he satisfied some lingering questions about that peculiar adolescent.