This Is for the Mara Salvatrucha (5 page)

O
seguera’s arrest warrant for Brenda Paz sat in police stations across the greater Dallas area by the end of January. Policemen all over the region now knew that she was wanted for capital murder in connection with the death of Javier Calzada. If any of them picked her up for anything, Oseguera would know about it within the hour. He was pleased with himself. This case was on firm footing, even though he had begun with next to nothing. It was the first arrest warrant he issued for the Calzada murder, just under a month since the fisherman had discovered Javier’s remains. But he didn’t stop there. Oseguera considered it a stretch, but Brenda could leave the area, maybe head back to California and hide out at one of three addresses he had found in the journal in her shoebox. Before he was content to let the system do its job, Oseguera called the police departments in El Monte, Monrovia, and Bell Flowers, California, to ask them to post his warrant.

For two weeks, Oseguera kept busy with other cases while he waited for someone to serve the arrest warrant on Brenda Paz. She was a runaway and a street kid who was likely to get into some kind of trouble, perhaps by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Oseguera was content to wait.

On Valentine’s Day, Oseguera’s cell phone brought him good news. It was a call from the Dallas Police Department. An attendant on duty had seen the arrest warrant issued for Brenda Paz and informed Os
eguera that she was in custody at a hospital in Carrollton. The occasional arrest for small-time offenses was a way of life for gang members, but this time it was different. Brenda was in the hospital with one of her homies who had been hospitalized after a brutal fight with a rival gang member. He was somewhere beyond the reception area, where Brenda waited in a bad mood. She scowled at anyone who looked at her too long. The staff at the hospital’s front desk alerted law enforcement, saying there was a problem at the reception. When the police showed up, they questioned Brenda and called in her information. The attendant notified the officers at the hospital of Brenda’s arrest warrant, and then called Oseguera. Brenda was eventually fingered as a runaway and taken into custody. But because she was a minor, she had to be released after twenty-four hours had passed.

“You come and get her now, or we’re letting her go,” the attendant told Oseguera. He agreed to go get her, and drove the forty-mile stretch to pick her up and bring her back to the Grand Prairie Police Department before taking her to the interview room for questioning.

His first impression of Brenda was positive, despite the circumstances. She acted like there was nothing to worry about. Her wide smile accentuated high, rosy cheeks that stood out against the light brown tone of her face. She was a little overweight, but obviously comfortable in her skin. Dressed in jeans, tennis shoes, and a loose-fitting shirt, Brenda didn’t appear malnourished or addicted to drugs. To Oseguera, she looked like a normal, well-adjusted teenager. He wondered what she was doing corresponding with someone like Veto.

While Brenda was in custody at the Grand Prairie PD, her disposition was confident, with a slightly hardened outer shell. She’s lively, Oseguera thought, with some attitude. Brenda had not been with her gang long, but she knew the first rule: Mara Salvatrucha do not rat. She would not break that sacred rule by speaking to this cop. When Oseguera began to question Brenda, he quickly learned two things. She was very smart. And she wasn’t going to tell him anything that would incriminate her or anyone she knew. Seated at the round table, across from Oseguera, Brenda remained relaxed despite her surroundings and the fact she was being questioned about a murder.

“So where are your belongings?” Oseguera asked, knowing she was picked up as a runaway.

Brenda replied she had been at a friend’s apartment for two days before moving on.

“Do you know [his] name?” Oseguera asked.

“No,” Brenda said.

That much was true. Within her gang, there were no real names, only street names. It was a habit among gang members to use one another’s street name and never use given names. The result was often an added level of confusion for detectives trying to unravel a case laced with street names. This was really only the beginning of the gang’s code.

Oseguera pulled out a stack of photos and flipped through them, asking Brenda if she recognized anyone. She easily identified the gangster Dallas Police were chasing down for their Virginia colleagues. Brenda knew that pointing out this guy to the cop wasn’t a big deal. He was long gone anyway.

Once he was through the stack, Oseguera put the photos away and opened a new line of questions about the items he found in the shoebox. He also asked about the muddy shoes.

“The stuff is mine, but the shoes you’re talking about are not,” Brenda said. “They’re Jessica’s.”

“Can you describe the shoes?” Oseguera asked.

“No,” Brenda said with a huff.

Oseguera then asked her about Javier Calzada. He asked her about Bachman Lake Park and where she was on the Monday Javier disappeared. He didn’t mention that he knew Javier was dead. And he left out information about the young man’s green Malibu and the other details of the case.

Brenda began recounting her story. She didn’t miss a beat. “That Monday I was home when Flaca came over in a green car around ten thirty,” Brenda recalled with surprising precision. “It was raining that night and very cold,” she added, becoming more animated. “I got in the car and asked Flaca if it was hers. She didn’t say, but later my homie Spooky told me that Flaca had killed some boy and stole his car.”

Oseguera carefully noted the names Flaca and Spooky.

“So we went over to Rio Loco, smoked some pot, and hung out. Then I went home,” Brenda continued, bored and slouching in her chair. “The next day, I called Flaca and asked her why she killed that guy and stole his car. She told me she took the guy out to the boon-docks and shot him to make rank in our gang, the MS. I’ve been a member for two months,” she admitted proudly before sitting up again.

Brenda’s pride in her gang compelled her to declare her association
with the Mara Salvatrucha even if she had to lie about what she remembered the night of Javier’s murder. She believed it was her obligation to tell the cops about her membership with MS. Brenda considered the MS as her family. She was close to her homies, and her life with the gang was the only life she cared to know in that moment.

“I think Flaca’s boyfriend was involved somehow because he had a gun that night at Rio Loco. And Flaca stole the car ’cause she wanted to steal the tires to sell them and make money to travel to El Salvador,” Brenda explained. She was lying through her teeth.

“Do you know where I can find Flaca?” Oseguera asked.

“I don’t know, but I think she’s in Houston. She should be passing through Dallas on her way to Maryland.”

This time she was telling the truth. It would be to her advantage to have Flaca arrested and throw Oseguera off her trail so she could escape before he found out too much.

Oseguera decided that talking more about Flaca was a dead end, but he wanted to see if Brenda would identify Veto, his aggravated robbery suspect and the man who had written Brenda a letter from the Dallas County Jail.

“Do you know Veto?” Oseguera questioned, carefully looking at Brenda.

“Yeah, he’s my boyfriend,” she admitted without hesitation, looking directly at him, but that’s where she stopped.

There was no way she was going to sell out Veto to this cop. She knew he was already in prison, so she was willing to point him out when Oseguera showed her his mug shot after she admitted to knowing him. But Veto terrified her, and she wasn’t going to tell Oseguera anything about the night Javier was killed, nor was she going to formalize what she told him during the interview. At the end of the interview, Brenda refused when Oseguera asked her to sign a statement. She knew exactly how far she could take this cop down the line. She knew where and when to lie and where to tell the truth. Veto had taught her a few things about how to deal with cops, but Brenda was smart enough to figure out the rest.

Oseguera closed his notebook and escorted Brenda to booking, where he took her prints and a photo. Then they walked out to his service vehicle. The drive to the Dallas County Juvenile Detention Center was silent. There was nothing else to say. Along the way, Brenda simply stared out the window. It was her first time under so much po
lice pressure. She was determined to keep her cool. So far, she had done well, but she didn’t know what would happen when they got to Dallas.

Oseguera took her inside and booked her. He knew he had other questions for her and wanted to prevent her from leaving town, but he didn’t have enough evidence to hold her. A juvenile court judge in Dallas issued her release the next day. Brenda was ecstatic. She was free! Brenda had danced with the police, lied, dropped a smoke screen, and was free to go soon after. She had beat a capital murder rap and pushed Oseguera’s focus to Flaca. For a rookie in the criminal underworld, Brenda had made a slick getaway.

Following Brenda’s questioning, Oseguera issued a capital murder warrant for Flaca’s arrest, the second warrant he’d put out for the Calzada murder. If she did pass through Dallas and was stupid enough to get picked up, Brenda reasoned, he would be able to question her.

Back in his office after dropping off Brenda, Oseguera returned to the contents of her shoebox. Veto had sent her a number of letters. In one, he told Brenda he thought the cops had found out he was the perpetrator in a separate robbery, one Oseguera suspected was the aggravated robbery at the local grocery store he was working. In the letter, Veto told Brenda to be careful. When he thought about it, Veto’s mention of the robbery in the letter made her an accessory to the crime. He thought Veto was the male suspect reported by the store owner, but the detective had never nailed down the female suspect. He now believed that suspect was Brenda.

Oseguera needed confirmation. He hopped in his vehicle and drove over to the grocery store to speak with the owner who had originally filed the armed robbery report. Oseguera explained that there was a lead in the investigation and showed him a number of female mug shots, including one of Brenda Paz.

The store owner took a moment to look through the mug shots and narrowed the selection down to two photos, including Brenda’s. Gotcha, Oseguera thought. Based on the owner’s confirmation, Oseguera issued a probable-cause warrant for the arrest of Brenda in connection with his armed robbery case. He was almost sure Brenda and Veto had knocked off the grocery store together two days before Javier was killed, but he knew it would take some time to find Brenda again after the judge had set her free. That kid was smart: she wasn’t going to just sit around and let him arrest her again.

O
seguera returned to the station, resigned to actively pursue Brenda across north Dallas. He started by contacting Brenda’s uncle. It was a quick conversation. Rafael told him she had run away and he hadn’t seen her in days. Great, this isn’t going to be fun, Oseguera thought as he dropped the phone into the cradle. She was a teenage runaway with possible gang ties and potentially enough money to leave the state. The hunt was on. He had to catch her before she left Texas.

He had to beat the streets. Before he left the station, Oseguera gathered his notes and made a mental list of all her possible whereabouts. His plan was to drive to each of these places and ask if anyone had seen Brenda. He was careful not to forget her photo.

Days passed as Oseguera doggedly followed Brenda’s trail. Each time he got close, he learned from one person or another, usually an apartment building supervisor or tenant, that Brenda and a group of Latino males had been run off.

Brenda ran with her homies in a leaderless pattern, squatting and taking care of Veto’s various businesses. Their leader was in jail and no one had stepped up to take his place. Brenda’s clique was disorganized; it had abandoned all the routine and habit the leader had enforced upon its members. They would crash in an apartment for two or three days, until they were kicked out. Then they would move on to another
squat or rent a hotel room for the night. This random movement made it very hard for Oseguera to draw a bead on Brenda’s location.

After days of searching, as Oseguera sat at his desk, mapping Brenda’s movements and searching for a pattern, he got a call from Gutierrez, the same Dallas Gang Unit detective who had passed him Brenda’s shoebox weeks before. The detective told Oseguera that he had some information that suggested Brenda was hiding out in the Colony, another small town within the greater Dallas–Forth Worth area. But Oseguera was tired of chasing Brenda. He was now less worried about her leaving Texas and preferred to get smart about catching her. There has to be a pattern to her movements, he thought. Oseguera asked Gutierrez to give him a call if she was picked up. He didn’t want to chase after her, but he wasn’t going to pass up a second opportunity to arrest her.

Detective Gutierrez called back just hours before sunrise to confirm that Brenda was in a holding cell at the Colony Police Department. They’d caught her, but they wouldn’t hold her for long because she was a minor. Oseguera didn’t waste time. He headed out immediately, driving as fast as he could in predawn darkness. He arrived an hour later, just in time to take Brenda into custody.

Oseguera was considerably more relaxed on the way back—he had her now and could take his time. He drove to the Grand Prairie Police Department and led Brenda up the steps and into his office. He sat her in a chair in front of his desk and rounded the corner to the opposite side. Before he took a seat, Oseguera reached over to the corner of his desk in front of Brenda and turned the photographs of his wife and kids facedown. He considered Brenda a dangerous person and didn’t want her to be a threat to his family.

Oseguera smoothed his moustache and leveled his gaze on Brenda. She looked a little nervous. Good, he thought. Maybe now she would talk. First he asked if she wanted to talk about the aggravated robbery case. She did not. Brenda crossed her arms and looked away. This was a decidedly different person from the Brenda he had first met. There was no smile, no bright eyes or bouncy attitude. This Brenda looked like a tough punk. She exuded bad attitude and disrespect. Unlike at their first interview, Brenda was not going to risk playing any games. Someone had gotten to her. Whoever it was, he scared her. She clammed up and waited.

Oseguera realized he wasn’t going to get anything from her. He
fought to maintain professional composure as he stood up, rounded the desk, and grabbed Brenda under one arm to walk her down the steps and back out to the motor pool. She’s a waste of time, Oseguera thought. He was resigned to driving her over to the Dallas County Juvenile Detention Center. Maybe this time they would hold her.

After they arrived, Oseguera booked her and took custody of her tennis shoes. They were white Sketchers with a light blue trim. He wanted to take a cast of the shoes to compare them to the ones in the shoebox. He also scraped out soil samples from her Sketchers so he could compare them to the soil samples taken from Javier’s car.

Oseguera returned to Grand Prairie with some new evidence but little more than a headache. This girl’s a pain in the ass, Oseguera thought as he slowly trudged up the steps to his office. He sat in the chair with a sigh and straightened the photos on his desk. It was still early in the morning, but he was accustomed to working the red-eye shift. With a sip of his coffee, Oseguera settled in behind his desk to focus on processing all the evidence gathered from his case. He wanted to look over everything and see if he could draw any conclusions from the evidence.

Throughout the whole investigation, the letters MS kept popping up. The letters stood for Mara Salvatrucha, which meant, loosely translated from Spanish, “street-smart Salvadoran group.” Oseguera had first seen them tattooed on Veto’s forehead—a striking sight he would never forget.
MS
13 was printed on the blue bandanna in Brenda’s shoebox. While looking for Brenda, he had interviewed a few people who claimed they were members of this gang. He had learned from the Dallas Gang Unit that there were a number of MS members across Dallas, and they all seemed to be loosely affiliated with each other. It was the first encounter Oseguera had with this street gang, but he had learned enough to realize that the gang was organized and violent, and that its influence wasn’t limited to Dallas.

He knew Veto was an MS member. Brenda had confirmed it, and it was possible the other men arrested with Veto were also MS members. The gangster on the run from Virginia was also an MS member, which meant the MS likely had a presence in that state as well. He thought Flaca, the girl Brenda said had killed Javier and stolen his car, was also an MS member. To Oseguera, it looked more and more likely that Javier’s murder was gang-related.

It took weeks to test the soil samples and shoe casts: Oseguera had
sent everything to the FBI, and the lab technicians there took their time. When he finally learned that the soil samples were a match, thus placing her in the vehicle and possibly at the scene of the crime, he knew that Brenda had probably lied during their first interview. Oseguera now believed that Brenda was present when Javier Calzada was killed. This made it even more important for him to persuade Brenda to open up.

But Brenda spent only one night in the juvenile detention center before officers there released her. Soon after, she left Texas, taking with her any chance for Oseguera to arrest her a third time.