Editor's note: This story contains explicit language and graphic descriptions of sexual violence and a murder investigation.
aren was alone in her apartment when the phone rang.
She didn't like being alone. It had been weeks since she had been attacked there, but the apartment still felt to her like a crime scene, a place that had been turned over and rummaged through. She had called the police on the night of the attack, when she finally convinced herself that she might be safe. She had gone to the local hospital and submitted to an examination. She had opened the Yellow Pages and called a resource new to the town where she had gone to school and now lived, something called a rape crisis center.