Santurce

Santurce is the place in Puerto Rico where Victoria Rogers is found after she vanishes from Orchard Street, and where Sharon travels in an effort to reach her. Its importance is less that of a broadly described landscape than of a destination in the family’s search for a missing witness: the meeting there brings Sharon face to face with the person whose identification has become central to Fonny’s case.

A Destination in the Search

Victoria is a key witness in the prosecution of Fonny, but she and the man living with her disappear from their Orchard Street apartment without leaving a forwarding address. The defense cannot contact her relatives, and her absence leaves the case’s already uncertain account of events harder to challenge. When Ernestine tells Tish that Victoria has been located in Santurce, the news turns the search into a practical decision: someone in the family must go to Puerto Rico.

Hayward cannot make the journey. He must deal with Officer Bell and the District Attorney’s Office in New York City, and his presence could be portrayed as an attempt to intimidate a witness. Santurce therefore becomes the place where the family’s effort to recover testimony must proceed without the lawyer who understands the prosecution’s tactics. Sharon goes in his stead, carrying a photograph of Fonny and Tish.

The Witness’s Account and the Case

Victoria’s statement places the assault on the night of March 5, between eleven and midnight, in the vestibule of her home, and identifies Alonzo Hunt as the assailant. Tish has never met Victoria and knows her story through the case; she understands that Victoria had come to the mainland after marrying an American-born Irish engineer, later lived on Orchard Street, and had children. These details make the witness’s location in Santurce part of a larger rupture between her former New York life and her sudden disappearance.

The geography surrounding the accusation is also consequential. Orchard Street lies near the East River, while Bank Street is near the Hudson; Tish regards the distance as incompatible with the claim that Fonny ran from the crime scene and was then arrested at home. Officer Bell nevertheless swears that he saw Fonny fleeing, although his regular beat was on the West Side. The case thus turns not only on what Victoria says, but on how her identification relates to Bell’s account and to the movements the prosecution attributes to Fonny.

Sharon’s Encounter with Victoria

In Santurce, Sharon tries to speak to Victoria as a mother addressing another woman who has been harmed by a brutal world, while also insisting that a false identification has put an unseen young man in jail. She tells Victoria that Fonny is twenty-two, hopes to marry her daughter, and is Black. When Victoria says she did see him, Sharon distinguishes the police lineup from the alleged assault: the lineup, she argues, was the first and only time Victoria saw Fonny.

The encounter does not produce a calm correction or a usable account. Sharon touches the crucifix she wears and appeals to Victoria in the name of God; Victoria screams, breaks away, and runs through the open door, crying for Sharon to leave. People emerge into the hallway. An older woman takes Victoria in her arms, and Victoria collapses against her, weeping, while those gathered look at Sharon. Sharon leaves carrying her handbag, jacket, and the photograph of Fonny and Tish, and Jaime drives her away in silence.

Narrative Significance

Santurce marks the point where the Rivers family’s attempt to contest a New York prosecution becomes a direct, personal appeal to the absent witness. The journey connects a legal dispute over identification with the human difficulty of reaching Victoria after she has disappeared; finding her does not mean that she will provide a revised statement or even remain in conversation. The encounter ends instead in separation, with Victoria taken away by another woman and Sharon returning to the family with no testimony secured.

The location also sharpens the difference between official authority and family effort. In New York, Bell’s account carries institutional weight, while Fonny’s and Tish’s testimony is treated as having little value and Daniel Carty is being held incommunicado. In Santurce, Sharon can challenge Victoria’s identification face to face, but she cannot compel an answer. The place is therefore both the destination of the search and the scene of its painful limit.