The police officer who watched the young girls. He was the only clue I had to go on. I hoped it would be enough, as I rushed from the cafe to the closest subway platform. It was time to do some research.
***
I quickly discovered that finding Santos might be a bigger feat than I’d originally estimated. He was one, small navy-uniformed needle in the mountainous haystack that was the NYPD.
Hunched over my laptop with one hand clutching my phone to my ear and the other holding a very full glass of wine, I tried to convince my best friend that I wasn’t crazy.
“You’re nuts,” Fae said, snorting into her receiver.
I was off to a good start. “I’m not nuts!”
“You honestly think Vera’s disappearance has something to do with the NYPD?”
“Miri said Vera isn’t the only girl who’s disappeared. And, Fae, the stuff I’ve been reading…” I trailed off, eyes peeled on the screen in front of me. “It’s messed up.”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you know the NYPD employs over 50,000 people? That’s more than the entire FBI! And there are thousands of stories posted online about police brutality and internal corruption on the squads.”
I heard Fae exhale a long huff of air.
“I’m not making this up, Fae. I’ve been reading this stuff for the past few hours, and there are more on-duty murders and cover-ups than you can imagine. Just go online, it’s all there at your fingertips.” My voice was intent. “Plus, did you know $4.6 billion dollars from last year’s city budget went solely to fund the police force? Our freaking mayor referred to the NYPD as the ‘seventh largest army in the world.’ Don’t you think that’s a bit excessive?”
“Excessive, maybe,” she agreed. “But it doesn’t change the fact that you sound like a crazy conspiracy theorist.”
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” I muttered into the phone.
“Don’t quote Lord Acton to me,” Fae protested. “I was a freaking History major in college.”
I sighed. “Well, I found a picture of Santos and it’s beyond creepy. Maybe you’ll change your mind when you see it.”
“Maybe,” Fae said, humoring me. “I have to go, the delivery guy is here with my Chinese. Promise me you won’t obsess over this all night.”
“Yep. I promise,” I agreed, rolling my eyes as I hung up.
Clearly, I wasn’t going to get much support from Fae. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was on to something.
My first hour of searching had been spent mainly sloughing through internet archives filled with useless factoids and anecdotes about the police force. I hit my first stroke of luck when I typed the nameSantosin combination with my NYPD search and found a story from last August on theNew York Daily Newswebsite. The article itself contained useless information on new city transit laws, but it was accompanied by a photo of a man in a navy blue uniform surrounded by a group of small children. One of the little girls, who was no more than five or six, was wearing his peaked officer’s cap and giggling at the camera as the brim fell down over her eyes.
The caption read:Officer Martin Santos, fifteen year NYPD officer and investigator for the narcotics unit, shares a laugh with neighborhood kids on their way to school in Little Italy early Friday morning.
Officer Santos wasn’t “sharing a laugh,” or even looking at the camera; his gaze was focused intently on the laughing girl wearing his cap. Despite the matte photo, his eyes appeared to gleam with excitement and one corner of his mouth was lifted in a knowing smirk.
My stomach turned at the sight of him.
If I had to describe Santos with one word it would benondescript. He was utterly unremarkable, average in every way — medium height and build, with slicked-back dark hair and brown eyes so light they were nearly colorless. He was maybe in his late thirties or early forties; stocky without being overweight, his hair thinning out but not balding, and his features plain but not unattractive.
He was someone you wouldn’t look twice at if you passed him on the street.
Well, I planned to do more than look at him, I thought, as I scribbled down the address of the downtown precinct that served as home base for the NYPD Vice Crimes unit. I was going to track him down and shadow him for the day. And if I got so much as an inkling that Officer Santos was somehow involved in the disappearance of underage immigrant girls…
I was going to take him down.
With a deep sigh, I swallowed a large gulp of wine and set the empty glass on my bedside table. My fingers hovered over the keys for a minute and I contemplated what I was about to put into my search engine. A string of simple words I’d never have guessed I’d one day find myself typing.
Immigrant girls disappearing.
In a fraction of a second, Google had retrieved over 10,000,000 results for my perusal.