This Is for the Mara Salvatrucha Read online

  The emancipation process required numerous court appearances and took much longer than Alexander, Greg, and especially Brenda, had anticipated. October was a tough month. The mid-Atlantic states lived with a three-week reign of terror as two killers, known as the Beltway Snipers, attacked people at gas stations, leaving ten innocent men and women dead and three others critically wounded. It was not business as usual for the area. The Washington FBI field office was working overtime to unravel this top-priority domestic terrorism case. Special Agent Alexander was pulled off Brenda’s case in an all-hand-son-deck effort to button down the Beltway Snipers. It was an inescapable delay in processing Brenda’s paperwork. Frustration mounted.

  Meanwhile, the tension and fear surrounding Brenda climbed. On one outing with Greg in mid-October, Brenda lowered herself in the seat after he pulled up to a gas station. She thought he was going to get shot. On a separate incident, Greg and Porter left the Massey Building with a coat over Brenda’s head before placing her in a van for the short drive to the detention center. Throngs of press, gathered to get a glimpse of one of the Beltway Snipers, thought she was Lee Boyd Malvo. Flashbulbs popped like it was a red-carpet event.

  The frustration came to a head in court at the end of October. Greg met with Brenda in one of the interview rooms the night before the court case that he thought would be her last. It was a simple space with a small window and venetian blinds. Once both were seated, Greg pulled the blinds shut and explained to Brenda that he thought she would be set free the next day. Brenda was ecstatic. With the exception of the one night she snuck out, Brenda had been incarcerated for nearly four months. She was eager to get out of detention. Before Greg left, he told her that he would see her in court the next day. He gave her a broad smile that barely masked his anticipation. It would be a big day for both of them. Brenda didn’t mask anything. Her smile in return held high hopes and a clear display of trust in her guardian.

  The next day, Greg stood in the very same hall where he had once contemplated leaving Brenda to her fate in the Fairfax County juvenile justice system. Just before the hearing, while he was waiting his turn to enter the courtroom, Alexander walked up to him briskly. The special agent had bad news. Because of the Beltway Sniper events that month, he was not prepared to receive Brenda. Alexander had initially agreed to place Brenda in an FBI safe house while she waited for an entrance date into witness protection, but it was still too soon. He needed more time. Alexander was shooting straight, no sugar coating on anything, and he had a point. The Beltway Sniper case had everyone in law enforcement behind on normal caseload work. Alexander was no exception. Greg frowned as the weight of this situation settled on his shoulders. He was in a tough spot. Even if he did manage to have her charges dropped and win her emancipation that afternoon, he would have nowhere to put her. Worse yet, he couldn’t tell Brenda in a controlled, private atmosphere the bad news before she heard it in court.

  Once the hearing started, Greg immediately realized the county prosecutor that afternoon was also going to be a pain in his ass. This guy wasn’t going to let Brenda off that easily. He couldn’t believe it. Everyone in the room knew Greg and Detective Porter had crossed natural boundaries between defense and prosecution to keep an important witness safe. Greg bristled and prepared his defense, but before he could put the prosecutor in his place, the judge bowled him over. Not allowing the hearing to move forward into the procedural arguments to drop the charges, the judge didn’t see why Brenda should be emancipated and made that point with a certain finality at the beginning of the hearing. Greg was against a wall and had to punt. He chose to waive Brenda’s right to a speedy trial. It would give him at least another twenty-one days to prepare a better defense against what he realized would be a considerably more complicated process than what he and Porter had originally thought.

  During the hearing, Brenda had sat calmly, but she was paying attention. As the hearing moved forward, with conversations bouncing from Greg to the judge to the prosecutor and back, Brenda quickly put two and two together. She realized she wouldn’t be set free that day. For her, it was a crushing realization. With quick whispers, Greg tried to help her keep herself together, but she stood up and with tears in her eyes asked if she could be escorted out of the courtroom. Sheriff’s deputies walked Brenda out into the hall, where she lost control and began bawling before the door was completely closed. Everyone in the courtroom heard her wracking sobs. It was an extremely hard moment for Greg, who wanted to comfort her but had to remain in court to finalize the hearing. His mind burned with the memory that just the night before he had told her she would be set free, but the system was set against him that day. Damn the Fairfax juvenile court, he thought as he stood there listening to Brenda cry.

  While Greg wrapped up the hearing, officers escorted Brenda back to detention, where she was placed in the general-population holding pen. Greg got over to the detention facility as soon as he could. Alexander was with him, and soon Detective Porter showed up. He had made a quick run to McDonald’s to get Brenda a McFlurry.

  She refused to meet with them and threatened to give up. The heavy toll levied by the bureaucracy had gotten to her. Brenda was deeply frustrated with the system and wanted out. She wanted to give up. Fuck these guys, Brenda thought. All they want is my information and don’t care about what I need. Greg knew it would take a monumental effort to convince her that they were there helping her for her own safety, not just for the information she had. It was a precarious moment. Brenda was headstrong, and she was all but ready to stop cooperating.

  After over an hour of coaxing and apologies, Brenda finally agreed to meet with Greg, Alexander, Porter, and a social worker to talk through what had happened. It was a tough meeting, and it took a while for her to stop crying. She finally did, but only because she ran out of tears. She had given them her all, and she felt used. She felt like she’d been punked. She’d opened herself up to them and had risked her life to tell them information that everyone knew could get her killed. Greg was in a tough position because the hearing had made him look like he was not on her side. He was desperate to convince her of just the opposite. On that frustrating day in late October, Brenda’s patience for courtroom wrangling and living under lock and key expired. If she had been anywhere but in a detention center, Brenda would have walked away.

  Delays were commonplace in court. Greg, Porter, and the rest were accustomed to the bureaucracy. Brenda was not. It meant much more for her to get through the process and into witness protection than Greg or Porter had realized before her breakdown. They felt guilty and redoubled their efforts to support her. Once they were able to calm her down, they embarked on a careful process to bring her back into the fold where they could trust that she understood what was going on and how long it was going to take.

  For days after the explosive court case, Greg made a point of meeting with her just to hang out, not to solicit more information. He continued to bring her ice-cream shakes, and to talk to her about the books she was reading, especially Crime and Punishment. He also worked with her on practice GED tests. She responded well to the attention. After she passed two practice tests in just ten days of classes, she was ready to take the real one. The detention home, however, wouldn’t allow it. As her legal guardian, Greg was not able to sign off on the GED permission forms. Only her real parents could do that. It was another headache and a slight setback during this delicate time of regaining Brenda’s trust. Greg promised Brenda he would make sure she could take the test once she was in witness protection, but he couldn’t help but feel cynicism creep in as he wondered if she would ever get there.

  CHAPTER 29

  The embattled emancipation process continued until the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, when Greg finally received the judge’s reluctant order to declare Brenda a legal adult. At the last moment, the Fairfax County judge had tried to block the emancipation. According to colonial law in Virginia, the parents of emancipated minors had to be informed with a notificatio
n placed on the courthouse door. In Virginia’s early life as a commonwealth, courthouse doors were littered with such notices. Hundreds of years later, the notices were stored in a binder kept by the court clerk. Over the due course of an emancipation process, the court was required to prepare the notification and file it with the clerk, but in an administrative snag, Brenda’s emancipation notification had not been filed. Locked in a stare with the judge, Greg was absolutely livid. He wanted to strangle someone, yell, jump up and down, smash benches and chairs. He was barely able to contain his anger and frustration at this unbelievable situation.

  The FBI was finally ready to receive her and this judge had slapped him with a minor technical error that was a result of the court’s own failure, not Greg’s lack of preparation. Greg was not surprised, given what he knew about the court’s proclivities for clumsy administration. During a recess, Greg was relieved when an eleventh-hour solution presented itself. The clerk prepared the notice and amended a legal juke that allowed her to file the notice “on the door” after the deadline. The paperwork was prepared on notebook paper. With the notice in place, the judge reluctantly issued Brenda’s emancipation order before the Thanksgiving holiday.

  With the order in hand, Greg ran over to the detention center and demanded that they release Brenda. Out of breath and full of excitement, he was delayed by the front-desk attendant, who wanted to double-check the order with the judge.

  “If you think I’m going to ruin my career over a judge’s order to let this girl out of detention, you’re fucking stupid,” Greg said with a self-righteous tone of voice and enough force to verbally beat the front-desk attendant into submission. Faking such an order would be the end of his career if someone found out, and he couldn’t believe the attendant was brazen enough to suggest he would do such a thing.

  Brenda was brought out with a broad grin. She was finally free. Greg held up her papers, weary but with a satisfied look. Brenda took one look at him and knew he’d made good on his promise. With the emancipation process out of the way, she was more than ready to be checked out of the detention center, sleep in a real bed, and wear real clothes again.

  Greg felt like he was on top of the world. He had won Brenda’s freedom in a hard legal battle where the system was up against him in every way. They had won that day, despite a judge who was in no mood to have a teenaged kid declared a legal adult and a county prosecutor who was unhappy about the legal fiction, that fake charge Greg and Porter wanted to have dropped.

  Brenda’s emancipation was just as much a legal triumph for Greg’s career as it was a confidence builder for the two of them. It was also a culminating moment in the long roller-coaster ride of building trust with Brenda. He had told her he would pull it off and he had. After months of taking her out, teaching her table manners, buying her books, clothes, and toiletries, letting her cry on his shoulder, and giving her stern talks about safety and making smart decisions, Greg had become more than Brenda’s lawyer. He was more than her guardian. He had become a father figure, and standing there on the street in front of the detention facility, Greg felt like the light at the end of the tunnel was shining on both their faces.

  Greg finally allowed himself to believe that Brenda actually had a chance of moving on. Brenda could have a future after the Mara Salvatrucha. She had already realized that her intelligence could get her somewhere, maybe even into a career where she could help young people like herself, kids who had been confused and had become tied up in something that they felt they couldn’t get out of. Now it was time to move forward and make that future a reality.

  For this moment alone, Greg had saved something special for Brenda’s new future. He handed her his personal copy of Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It was one of her favorite books. Greg had lent her a copy a couple of weeks after having met her, hoping Brenda could find inspiration in the one book that seemed to resonate with many people who dragged themselves through a life of crime.

  Brenda had surprised Greg. She had devoured the book and asked intelligent questions concerning various layers of meaning in the plot. Brenda read between the lines. This book, in so many ways, had helped bring out the real Brenda for Greg, and had solidified their relationship. It was the appropriate ending to the long battle they had fought together and the friendship that they had formed.

  Greg was optimistic as he handed Brenda over to the very capable hands of Special Agent Laurence Alexander, who would drive Brenda to her new apartment. It was an apartment the FBI agent had selected personally.

  Winesburg Manor, Brenda mouthed to herself as she and the agent passed the sign to her new home. As they entered the one-bedroom apartment, Brenda noted so many things. The refrigerator was stocked. She had new clothes and a prepaid cell phone. He had bought her magazines, books, and toiletries and planned on giving her about $15 a week to have some pocket cash. Brenda was ecstatic. She was within walking distance of the Silver Spring stop on the Washington Red Line, just inside Maryland. It was the perfect location for a safe house. No one coming in or out cared enough to ask questions or notice anything that seemed out of place.

  Brenda was on the way to becoming a normal kid. In late November it appeared that the worst was behind her. But when Brenda called Greg the day after Thanksgiving, he realized his belief in a happy ending couldn’t have been further from the truth.

  “I’m so lonely,” she said, between choking sobs.

  PART 3

  CHAPTER 30

  When Greg transferred Brenda to FBI custody, he was no longer her lawyer or legal guardian. Brenda was now in the federal system and, legally speaking, an adult. Greg’s role as her legal guardian was relevant only as long as Brenda was a minor. Once she was placed in the safe house, he was no longer bound by law or legal ethics to oversee Brenda’s well-being. But he didn’t stop caring.

  Brenda hadn’t been alone for more than forty-eight hours before she called Greg.

  “I’m so alone,” Brenda said, upset and crying. “They gave me this cell phone and the first thing I did was call Mom. Now I’m nearly out of minutes,” she continued between sobs.

  Brenda had spent all the money Alexander gave her on prepaid cell phone cards calling Honduras to speak with her mom. Greg knew Brenda had a difficult and special relationship with her mom. He wasn’t sure what the problem was, but Brenda had told him her mom needed her help. Someday Brenda wanted to bring her mom back to the United States from Honduras and take care of her.

  After Alexander dropped Brenda off at her safe house, he reminded her of the lessons she had learned from Greg and Porter once they knew she would eventually be on her own. They had instructed her not to write down any of their names or what they had talked about. A paper trail could be easily followed and would lead directly from her to the police.

  She was also told that if she ran into old friends with the MS, she would have to lie about where she had been. She would have to do everything possible to maintain a façade of loyalty to the gang. After her first weekend at the safe house, Brenda hadn’t seen anyone. And instead of being a relief, that happened to be the most pressing problem.

  “I didn’t want to call you over the holiday,” Brenda told Greg, a little calmer.

  “But you can call me anytime, you know that,” Greg said.

  Brenda talked about her mom and wanting to take care of her. For Greg, Brenda’s relationship with her mother was an effective fulcrum to leverage a strong argument in her mind for staying away from the gang. “If you’re going to take care of your mother, you need to be able to take care of yourself. If you need a job, what would you do? You know, you need an education,” Greg said.

  These words were part of the repetitive lectures he used to push her to getting serious about her future. Greg had purchased GED practice books for Brenda, encouraging her to study for the test. She had already passed the practice tests before her emancipation hearings concluded, and once ensconced in witness protection, she could schedule the real exam. As far
as Greg knew, Brenda’s formal education had stopped at eighth grade. With the GED, she could skip over high school and head straight into college.

  “Honey, so long as you’re here I will do everything I can for you, you can call me anytime. I’m going to see about getting clearance to see you and meet you and take you out. I know it’s tough but I know you can read. I know you can watch TV.

  “Whatever you need, we’re going to get it,” Greg continued. “The U.S. government has all those resources and they want to help you.”

  Brenda was silent, listening to the only man she could trust.

  “Honey, you’ve got to get off the phone. You’ve got to get some sleep. It’s just like being in jail—the first day is always the worst. It’s a new environment. That first day is really long. You’ll remember it forever,” Greg said, empathizing with her.

  He could sense she was feeling a little better.

  “Look, have you got food in the place?” Greg asked. He wanted to make sure she had enough to eat.

  “No, no,” Brenda replied. “We bought a bunch of food, so I’m going to be fine.”

  After he hung up, Greg realized that loneliness would be a challenge for Brenda. He made a point to call her over the weekend to give her some company. Greg genuinely thought Brenda was slowly adjusting to her new life in the safe house, but he remained worried. Brenda had struggled through the Thanksgiving holiday, a time when family and friends get together. With Christmas around the corner, Greg feared that Brenda might reach out to her old friends.