The Entirely Fabricated Story of Lizzie Nickerson

Chapter 9

In the bathroom mirror, Frazier Stoudemire watched while he steered his disposable razor through the shaving foam on a path from his cheek across his chin. He rinsed his razor under the faucet, and as he glanced at his reflection thought about the side part in his hair. It had been in pretty much the same location since grade school migrating maybe a quarter of an inch up or down throughout the decades.

He brought the razor up to his other cheek and shaved a fresh path through the foam. His hair was beginning to thin and gray, which made him think about maybe trying out a buzzcut. He wasn't one of those guys who could pull off the dyed hair look. A stunt like that would surely invite ridicule.

He scraped the stubble from beneath his chin as he pondered shaving his head. The maintenance-free concept was appealing although he probably didn't have the head or the nerve for it. Officer Adams looked good with a shaved head, even with gray hair speckling his goatee. Frazier would need a head shaped like Officer Adams' head to even have a shot at a successfully shaved head. Stoudemire imagined how his work life would implode if he showed up at the office with his head shaved, a head shaped like a basketball and God only knows what bumps or indentations might be lurking beneath his hair. A shaved lumpy head would instantly be interpreted by his partner, Mitch Tarpick, and every other law enforcement officer at the precinct as aggressively exotic. Forget it. Stoudemire was a side-part kind of guy. Accept it and move on.

When he arrived at the police station parking lot a half hour later, Frazier found his partner, Tarpick searching under the seats of their undercover vehicle. He closed the door and then popped the trunk.

"What's going on, Mitch?"

Tarpick slammed the trunk lid and then plopped down on the vehicle's rear bumper, waving Stoudemire a little closer. He checked over his shoulders for nearby police officers, and then lowered his voice. "You didn't happen to pick up a case file, did you?"

"Case file?"

"The Halo file. I thought I might've left  it in the car."

"Not there, huh?"

Tarpick gave him a cutting glare. "The murder and jewelry theft out there in the hoity-toity land of Terrace Park."

"Yeah, Yeah." Stoudemire nodded as he recalled the case.

The case involved the murder of an affluent woman named Farrah Halo. It sounded like a name she had invented and in all likelihood probably was. Ms. Halo was allegedly killed by her interior decorator who then stole her jewelry. The neighbor reported hearing loud voices from Ms. Halo's residence. She said it wasn't uncommon to hear the victim in combat mode with her decorator. After a particularly loud disagreement, the neighbor was startled by a piercing scream followed by a deadly silence. She rushed to her window and saw the interior decorator racing away in his sports car. When she went next door to investigate, she found Farrah sprawled on the floor. Once she recovered from the initial shock, the neighbor called the police. The interior decorator proclaimed his innocence. His home was searched but the jewelry was not recovered. He remained the primary suspect.

"This isn't an open and shut case about some penny-ante junkie." Tarpick dropped his head into his hands. "This Halo gal was a big deal. If the captain finds out I lost the case file my goose is cooked." 

Frazier felt sorry for his partner. Tarpick had a lot going on in his life and the grizzly details dribbled out during the long hours spent together cruising around the city from crime scene to crime scene.

Tarpick's wife, Chloe, was determined to get pregnant, despite the fact that she was forty-seven years old. Tarpick blamed her sudden obsession on his wife's coworker who'd recently returned from maternity leave with hundreds of baby pictures in tow. Baby fever was contagious and every cell of his wife's body was infected. Mitch had been unable to talk Chloe out of what he considered "an extremely ill-conceived idea." She didn't find his choice of words amusing. She insisted that insemination was a top priority. There was no time to lose.

He'd invented any excuse he could think of to avoid having sex with his wife, including hiding in the garage, faking a groin injury, and he even went so far as to enroll in an evening ceramics class at the community college.

To make matters worse, their son, Tyler, a sophomore at Oberlin College, joined a reggae band called Montego Belmont. Tyler had only been playing the bass guitar for a few weeks and, as expected, was an absolutely atrocious bass player. The band lasted less than a month when it became clear that the band members were more interested in smoking ganja than they were in playing music. As a tribute to what he believed could have been one of the world's greatest reggae bands, Tyler changed his name to Montego Belmont. He told his parents that he couldn't bear to see an awesome name going to waste and he was now considering switching his major to Jamaican studies. On a positive note, he gave up playing the bass guitar.

During the past months, Mitch Tarpick's temperamental disposition had deteriorated. Given the pressures of his personal life, it wasn't surprising that he'd forgotten where he'd left the Halo case file.

"Don't worry." Frazier patted his sullen partner's shoulder. "We'll find it." He then added, "How's the ceramics class going?"

Tarpick almost smiled. "The instructor said that the glazing on my pottery was outstanding."

Frazier lent a sympathetic ear but what could he say? "Relax, buddy. Things will work out?"

First, Mitch Tarpick was not his buddy and second, they both knew that the odds of things working out were slim. In fact, there was a good chance that things for Detective Tarpick were only going to get worse.

When they noticed Lizzie Nickerson walking their way accompanied by her Aunt Sonya, Tarpick looked like he had fallen to the bottom of the world.