“Nope,” said the other man.
As he got closer, Jayson Fox saw that it was a bag, not a mangled animal. He looked back toward the truck in confusion. One of the men, Egg McMuffin in hand, motioned for him to open the bag, which was soaked in what seemed to be blood. Jayson Fox held his breath and opened it. The men in the truck watched as he peered into the bag and then saw the shock spread across his face. He ran to the edge of the road and threw up. The girls filmed him retching with their phones. Within hours the footage was on the Internet.
The second bag was found later, having been dragged by a truck for seven miles. The Century Freeway was temporarily closed in both directions, causing traffic to back up.
Dr. Ormond Brown watched the news coverage at his home in West Texas and wondered if the police would soon be at his door. He had a feeling he knew who was in those bags, and if he was correct, then he was responsible in some way for their deaths. Or lynchings. He and his wife had put the names and photos of Simmons and Green on their website, after the police and the army had refused to act. Now someone had gone and killed them. This made Dr. Brown think of his daughter. He thought of her till he cried.
The death of Dr. Brown’s daughter, United States Army private Shonda Brown, had been ruled a suicide. She was the first African American woman from Texas to die in the Iraq War, a distinction her father would rather she didn’t have. On her death certificate, the cause of death was listed as gunshot wound, self-inflicted. In the three years since she died, this had not been amended.
Shonda had been stationed at Camp Mojave in Iraq. In her letters and calls home, she seemed untroubled, yet army investigators said she had shot herself in the head with an M16, leaving no note behind. After her body was shipped home, Dr. Brown examined her at the local mortuary, where she was in full military dress. The white gloves she wore on her hands were glued to her skin. That was the first sign that something was wrong. Upon close inspection, Dr. Brown saw that his daughter’s face was bruised and her teeth broken. The exit wound at the back of her head was small, too; not from an M16, her father reasoned, but from a pistol.
He asked the funeral home to remove his daughter’s clothing and to cut the gloves from her skin. Her hands were found to be scraped and burned. There were bruises all over her arms and legs. When he received the autopsy report, he read that her genitals were burned with bleach. Shonda’s father had known all along that his daughter hadn’t committed suicide. He couldn’t understand how such a conclusion was ever reached.
For three years, through their congressional representative and the Freedom of Information Act, Shonda’s parents collected evidence about their daughter’s rape and murder. In his investigations, Dr. Brown learned of other American servicewomen who had “committed suicide” in Iraq by seemingly impossible means, such as multiple fatal gunshot wounds or being run over by a truck. Talking to the women’s families made him feel as if he was doing something, even if he was powerless in Shonda’s case.
Near the third anniversary of Shonda’s death, her parents received an unexpected break in their investigation. After he was discharged, Sergeant Lance Pederson committed suicide by asphyxiation in his brother’s garage. Before his death, he wrote a letter to the Browns, telling them that their daughter had been raped by two of their fellow soldiers stationed at Camp Mojave—Michael Simmons and Davis Green. He didn’t know if they had murdered her, but they had raped her. Everyone knew it.
Shonda’s parents turned the letter over to army investigators. Simmons and Green, by this time both private citizens in Los Angeles, were interviewed, but there was no evidence that Shonda had ever been raped, and no rape kit was ever done. Officially: gunshot wound, self-inflicted.
In an act of desperation, Shonda’s parents put the names and photos of Simmons and Green on the website they’d set up for Shonda. What if they rape someone else? Shonda’s mother had asked. What if they commit another murder? Simmons and Green threatened to sue and even hired a lawyer, but now it would never come to that.
Dr. Brown sat in his living room, watching the reports that showed aerial footage of the Harbor Freeway interchange, the brown canvas bags, and the videos of Jayson Fox vomiting. Dr. Brown knew who was in those bags, he just knew. The night before, he had received an email with a file attached. On the file were video confessions, one by Simmons, one by Green, admitting what they had done to Shonda in the kind of detail that left no doubt they were telling the truth. The footage was reminiscent of the videos made by suicide bombers. The men sat in front of an American flag and spoke directly into the camera, knowing that death was upon them.