“There’s some ambient sound. Something, I don’t know…cars going by. After that she hangs up. The whole thing is seventy-three seconds. I remember because we went over and over it. We couldn’t trace the call.”

“So you didn’t get any names?” Eden tapped her pen on the table.

“No, and that’s just it. It’s the whole point of our job, right? After the call, I get funny looks from other officers. Turns out, the investigating detectives figure it’s my fault I didn’t get the names. If the guy kills again, or the girl on the phone turns up dead, it’s on me.”

Eden leaned back. “So when I come to you yesterday, you figure I’m blaming you for the girls here in Santa Rosa.”

“Something like that.”

“You realize I’m not, right? Anyway, the girls in Santa Rosa were killed before Avelos.”

“Yeah. I get that.”

“But tell me, is there anything else you remember about the call? What was the girl’s voice like?”

“She had that Okie accent some people in Fresno have, but nothing unusual. Believe me, I went over that transcript a hundred times. No unusual words or expressions. No details. No…nothing.”

Eden nodded. “I didn’t see anything either.”

Cipriani raised her hands in futility. “I don’t even know why I’m telling you this. No matter what I do, it’s going to come back on me all over again, in this friggin’ department.”

“No, it won’t. I won’t let it.”

Cipriani hunched over the table. “You can’t promise that. Why would you even say it?”

Eden met her eyes. “You’re right. I’m sorry. So why did you tell me?”

“Last night, I’m home alone, thinking about what you said. How you got under my fucking skin.”

Eden forced a smile.

“Sorry,” Cipriani said. “It’s true. Anyway, I go through the call again in my mind, and I remember something I must have blocked from my memory. At the very end of the call. I’m asking the girl questions and waiting to hear her voice, and she doesn’t say anything. So I stop talking for a few seconds and wait. But there’s another sound, after the traffic sounds. Another voice—not the girl’s. It was too faint for the transcriptionist to hear, and I forgot it because the voice wasn’t the girl.”

“What was it?”

“A man’s voice. Or, at least at the time I thought it was a man. Maybe it didn’t happen at all and I imagined it. I don’t know.”

“Wait. It was a man?” Eden moved forward, on the front of her chair.

“Yeah. A man.”

“Could you recognize anything about the voice?”

“That’s just it. He only says one word. It was a name: Laura.”

“Laura?”