Gloria Green

Gloria Green, 39, a Black woman, died on June 29, 1999, in Brooklyn, New York. In the public record that is easily accessible today, her name is difficult to trace beyond the bare fact of a death in that place and time, leaving a story with sharp edges but missing pages: the ordinary rhythms of a summer day in Brooklyn, then a sudden stop, and a silence that can feel louder than any headline.

Not long after that summer, Brooklyn neighborhoods began to be haunted by a pattern of killings t ...