Cipriani shrugged. “Anyway, I’m not here to talk about that. I came here to tell you about Fresno. I never really caught on at the PD there. The department had a few women before me but not many. Command tolerated us but didn’t offer any support. I was fair game for the guys in the field. Practical jokes, sexual threats. At first I thought it was initiation stuff, but it went on and on.”

“Did you file a complaint?” Eden asked.

“For what? A female officer before me filed a complaint and got a load of shit. I went along and kept my head down. But when the thing happened with the Avelos case, it was the last straw.”

“What exactly happened?”

“Sandoval sent you the transcript from the tip line?”

“I read it, but why don’t you tell me.” Eden took out a notepad and pen and leaned forward.

Cipriani stared at the tabletop. “After the Avelos girl was found, the department opened a homicide tip line. On the second night, I’m working the phone. After midnight I get this call. Female. Young. She’s crying, out of breath. It’s somewhere outside, traffic in the background. And the girl’s…scared. That’s the thing that stuck in my head, even weeks later. How scared she was. That’s what you don’t get in the transcript.”

“Go over what the girl said.”

“She said the night of the Avelos murder, her boyfriend comes home and starts acting weird. He’s excited, can’t sit still. She asks him what’s wrong, and he says to shut the fuck up. She tries to say something, and he lets loose. He gets her facedown on the bed and tears off her blouse. Then he takes out a knife and cuts her. Once, at the base of the spine.”

Cipriani looked up at Eden. “The medical examiner told us about the cut on Avelos’s body, but that information wasn’t public. No one outside the department knew. So I hear this girl talking about the same kind of cut, and I think, shit. I ask her to repeat it so I’m sure. And she says it again. The way she says, it’s at the bottom of her back.”

“But according to the transcript, she doesn’t give you her name or the boyfriend’s name, right?” Eden wrote quickly on the pad.

“No. She’s obviously scared. Scared of him, of what he’ll do. So all I can think is, keep the caller talking, calm her down, develop trust. But she starts crying again. I’m asking for the location, saying we can have a unit there. I ask the boyfriend’s name, but she says the guy’s going to kill her. I ask her name. I ask that three times. But she doesn’t answer. That’s all she says.”

“Yeah, I saw that,” Eden said. “Then she hangs up?”