Allen W. Evans's Page

The murders were nothing new. Over the years they had become so common they barely registered a 15-second spot on the late news and maybe a hastily thrown together three sentence obituary buried deep in the middle of the cities crime sheet of the local paper. They went almost unnoticed on the streets of Trinity Gardens, a neighborhood familiar with ambivalance and death and names whispered and discarded carefully in juke joints and trap houses. Places where BB king and Muddy Waters blended easily with reefer smoke and sweat to seep through diaphanous walls into dew slick streets and urine stained alleys. Death was a casual acquatance, murder was slightly more intimate.

I'd heard about the disappearances, the murders. Grim gossip of death. I turned my head. It wasn't my problem, not my fight. I was battling demons of my own at the time and ghosts from my past slipped into my nightmares and swam into my soul like pungent smoke from a burned out mortuary. By the time I got involved Trinity Gardens had become a killing field.