The Entirely Fabricated Story of Lizzie Nickerson

Chapter 25

"Lizzie Nickerson," Frazier Stoudemire mumbled to himself. He rubbed his red eyes, sore from poring over the case file on his desk. "I wonder if she still lives over there on the east side."

"What do you have there?" Detective Tarpick said, standing over his partner's shoulder. "Let me have a gander. Isn't that the Booth case?"

Frazier slowly turned in his chair. There was no need to respond. Obviously, it was the Booth case.

"You can't crack 'em all," Tarpick said. "Sometimes you hit the wall. You walk in circles going nowhere fast." He leaned forward resting one hand on the corner of his partner's desk, the other at his hip, grimacing. "We're not magicians, we're police detectives."

During the past few years, Tarpick had successfully dodged the baby bullet. His wife, Chloe, tired of his excuses for not fulfilling his marital obligations, had given up on her desire for a new, bouncing baby Tarpick. But by then, Mitch had contracted pottery fever and pursued his ceramics class with an unbridled passion, his back muscles strained as badly as his relationship with his glum spouse.

"Have you seen a chiropractor about that back, Mitch?" Frazier asked.

"The last thing I need is some wannabe doctor twisting my spine around," Tarpick grumbled. "I know I've been burning the midnight oil at the potter's wheel," he said. "I don't need some glorified masseuse to tell me that."

He fumbled with the lid of a prescription bottle. 

"Why don't you take a break from your ceramics class?" said Frazier. "Give your back a rest."

"I'm so close to a breakthrough," Tarpick replied his voice softening. "I can almost taste it."

"Ceramics injury." Officer Delvin Ott chuckled as he passed by. "That's a new one."

Tarpick grumbled something that sounded like "shut your face, Ott." He may have said something about Ricky Gervais but Tarpick would be one of the last people on the planet to make references to comedians or any form of comedy for that matter. He took his serious nature seriously. There was less than an infinitesimal chance that he uttered some version of "Shut Gervais, Ott." Even for a man wobbly on his feet from muscle relaxants and pain medication, that would be inexcusably nonsensical.

In any case (no pun intended), Stoudemire dared not float the idea of conferring with Lizzie about the Booth case. There was no upside to compounding his partner's misery.

........

Wearing her customary oversized hoodie and baggy jeans, Lizzie sat on the fifth step of the first-floor staircase in her apartment building, her lanky legs crossed at the ankles. 

"You remember me, don't you?" said Frazier. "I'm Detective--"

"Frazier Stoudemire." She finished his sentence.

He smiled. "Would you be interested in taking a look at this?"

"You know I'm on the spectrum, right?"

"I guess I had an idea that you might be." There was no hiding the fact that the topic, and the blunt way she introduced it, made him terribly uncomfortable.

"If you think I'm an autistic person with a superpower, let me stop you right there."

"Well, you are exceptionally skilled at--"

"I look at things. Really look at things. That's all. You could do the same thing if you just concentrated on looking."

He shook his head. "Believe me, Lizzie. I've tried. I just can't do what you can do."