The sidewalk is already wet from the rain when the lifeblood of the serial killer’s twenty-two year old female moistens it still, and only a few people stop and wait breathless for the unthinkable to settle in, as the rest of the Valley residents continue on in this daily life not thankful nor appreciative of their own sparring or even appalled at the atrocities committed now for over a year. This has gone on far too long. A friend of mine today, a coworker in my office building, collapsed in my arms at the news of her friend’s late night murder at Gilbert & Brown, and thirty minutes later we sat alone in an empty university conference room as she reminisced about their days together in high school, sitting in the same math classes waiting for the glory of graduation and better days ahead. Now my friend’s eyes are wet and the blood vessels pronounced, and the better days only lasted a short few years, and our Valley swallows with not so much as a lump. We are residents of a city who spare our government and police from the accountability necessary when a job is not performed. We are the same at the macro level. When a local serial killer with over a year of murderous history and 38 shootings proves just as hard to find as a Muslim terrorist in the Middle East, and our military and police pass over third-grade pardons for each, we are the ones who should be appalled at the allowance of such time and excuses. May we be angry, or all be damned.

A city without emotion is no better, and just as monstrous, as a gun-laden criminal with an innocent in sight.