One morning in December, Carlos went to work early, and the friends he had deputized to watch her got into a fight and left the house. Sandoval ran to a friend’s place, where she called her mother, who got in touch with the police. They told her to call a taxi to pick Sandoval up. Sandoval had always distrusted the police, because she felt that they could not protect her from Carlos. After being forced to make her getaway in a taxi, she came to resent them. “Thank God you’re alive,” one of the officers told her. “Do you have any idea who you were with?”
