The Entirely Fabricated Story of Lizzie Nickerson

Chapter 54

It didn't take long for word to spread through the precinct that Detective Mitch Tarpick had suffered a nervous breakdown and that his wife had been arrested and charged with felony possession of narcotics. The charges were dropped but that didn't discourage the men and women in blue from gossiping about Mr. and Ms. Tarpick, often with preposterous embellishments. 

Some had Mitch pegged as a closet crack cocaine addict. Others claimed Chloe had been begging for a divorce for years and used the marijuana bust as a means to that end. Another version had Mitch sleeping with his ceramics instructor who threatened blackmail and sent compromising photos to his wife. There were dozens of versions and the one thing they had in common was that not a single story was told with compassion or empathy. Within the department, there was no shortage of schadenfreude.

When asked for comment about his partner, Frazier would only say that Mitch was going through a tough time and he couldn't comment further or provide details.

He sat upright in his creaky chair, and tipped his head back, administering drops to his burning eyes. He'd been reading field reports all morning. He tapped a stack of papers against his desk and stuffed them into a folder when he heard Officer Ott coming up behind him.

"Hey, Frazier," Ott said. "A call came in from a Sonya Finch over on the east side. Isn't that the name of that Lizzie girl's mom?"

"Aunt," Stoudemire replied.

"Somebody tried to break into her apartment. A perp with a knife."

"Did she give a good description?"

"Really don't need one," Ott said. "The guy's laying face down on the sidewalk."

When they pulled up on the neighborhood street, Cincinnati's finest were already busy processing the scene. Stoudemire noticed the coroner's van circling the block, looking for a place to park. A uniformed officer waved and pointed to a space further up the street.

Frazier and Officer Ott got out of the car and stood behind the fluttering yellow ribbon of tape, watching the photographers busily documenting the crime scene. Stoudemire's eyes moved slowly across the sidewalk at the twisted body of Tyson Russko surrounded by broken glass and fish tank gravel. His flat gray tattooed rat face was frozen in an expression of wide-eyed shock, suggesting perhaps his final thought was that he'd been struck by a thunderbolt from the heavens hurled by an angry god of retribution.

Stoudemire gazed up at the third-floor window and caught a glimpse of Lizzie, who abruptly vanished.

"I'm gonna go upstairs and check on them," said Frazier. "Let me know–"

He was interrupted by his bedraggled partner cutting through the crowd, waving his badge, and shouting, "Back it up! Police detective coming through!"

"Here comes trouble," said Stoudemire.

Ott grumbled, "Bet jer ass. Sick of this guy's bull."

Delvin Ott may have said something about 'Jurassic' but Stoudemire doubted it. Tarpick had a way of rubbing people the wrong way, especially Officer Ott, but making a dinosaur reference at a gruesome crime scene was wholly inappropriate and unprofessional and Delvin Ott was neither.

"What'd I tell you?" Tarpick closed in on his partner. He pointed up toward the third-floor window. "I knew that little nutjob up there was trouble the moment I laid eyes on her. And now look."

"Nutjob?" said Frazier. "Really?"

Tarpick raised his hand apologetically. "Momentary lapse in judgment."

Ott's face reddened. He couldn't bring himself to make eye contact.

"I had a gut feeling." Tarpick patted his belly. "Just like you said." 

"She probably had nothing to do with this," Frazier replied.

"Oh, no? Witnesses said that fishbowl was thrown out of that window. Whose fishbowl and whose window do you think that is?"

Stoudemire understood the point his partner was making but fought the urge to say something about that strange sentence. He let it slide. This was not the time or place to get into another discussion about sentence construction.

"Shouldn't you be in a hospital or something?" said Ott.

Tarpick squinted up at the policeman and snarled, "Mind your own beeswax."

Ott turned his big head when he heard a woman's voice holler, "Dude! Isn't that your old man?"

Over his shoulder, Frazier watched Indigo Finch approach, followed by a straggly guy carrying a guitar case. Stoudemire suspected that fellow was none other than Montego Belmont. When he looked back at his partner, his suspicions were confirmed.

If one were to page through Webster's Dictionary in search of the word, 'flabbergasted,' they would likely find a picture of Mitch Tarpick frozen in this very moment.

His jaw hung open, his eyes bulged, and what little color had been there, faded from his face. His brain contorted, struggling to make sense of the random appearance of his son and his pretty hippie girlfriend at the grisly crime scene. The closer his brain got to processing a plausible connection, the more Mitch Tarpick hoped he was suffering a delusion. He sincerely wished he was back in his hospital bed, admittedly, another lapse in judgment.