Nikki Armstrong: Measure of a Woman

Detective Nikki Evelyn Armstrong, a kick-ass decorated member of the United States Navy and the New York City Police Department, stood at the site of the freshly dug grave surrounded by its moist piles of dirt. From where she stood, Nikki could see all the acreage known as the Canarsie Cemetery. The cemetery was a city-owned burial ground, which ran along Remsen Avenue in Brooklyn, New York, just a few blocks south of Canarsie Park, once a part of the famed hunting ground of the Canarsie Indians, and about two miles from the Belt Parkway, the handy escape route for many Canarsie residents needing to just get away for a while. This sacred ground was open to the public as a site to honor loved ones who had gone home to be with the Lord. For those who questioned the existence of a higher being, it was no more than a final resting place.

Nikki began to shed a tear as her finely manicured, slender fingers stroked the oversized wooden casket sprinkled with knotholes, splinters, and other imperfections that housed the small body of Kamari Prescott. A young boy who seemed to love life despite its harsh realities. Kamari had been befriended by abuse far too often in his battered young life and visited by death much too early than what Nikki believed the good Lord intended. As she stood at the grave, she questioned the wisdom of God’s gift of free will.

It saddened Nikki deeply that she and the gravediggers were the only ones in attendance for the homegoing service of a little boy whose life had painfully, with no mercy been taken by his uncaring bitch of a mother. The reality of this setting renewed Nikki’s rage over the entire heartless chain of events. As she stood wondering if there was more she could have done or should have done, she began to ponder the injustice of it all.