“Sorry,” he said sheepishly and hung up.
When I regained my focus, I envisioned Travis and began the spell:
Moon, Sun, and Earth,
Air, Fire, and Sea,
He who is lost
Return him to me.
I repeated the spell for the third time and opened my eyes, not sure what to expect. I was still in my car at the edge of the same road. I called Travis. “I don’t think it worked, but don’t worry, I’ll find you.”
I rode up and down streets, Travis telling me to try one turn or another. At the ten-minute mark, I made a unilateral decision to listen to my instincts instead of him. After that epiphany, it wasn’t long before I saw his headlights. The spell had worked after all. I just had to trust myself enough to set it in motion. I pulled up nose to nose with his car. We both got out and met in the middle of the road. Travis pulled me to him. His hands were ice cold, even through my warm jacket, not surprising given the temperature and the fact that his friend was lying dead at the bottom of the embankment.
“Thanks for coming,” he murmured, his cheek pressed to mine. We stayed like that for a full minute. “It looks like Ryan lost control, went over the edge, and into a tree,” he said after releasing me. “I want you to see the scene before I call 911. After the cops are here, they won’t let anyone get near it. I need your input—I’m not objective enough. I’m going to position my car for the headlights to light up the crash scene.” While he was doing that, I walked to the edge of the road and looked down. His headlights were already helping to illuminate the drop-off. It wasn’t as steep as I’d imagined, but Ryan’s flight down the hill had put him on a collision course with a tree large enough to win handily in any combat with a car. I turned away and searched the nearby roadway for evidence that Ryan had slammed on his brakes, burning rubber, when he realized what was about to happen.
Travis joined me there, catching my hand in his and weaving his fingers through mine.
“I can’t find any tread marks,” I said.
“Yeah, there aren’t any.”
“Could he have been distracted by his phone until it was too late and he was hurtling down the hill?”
“I’d like to say ‘no’, but he was bad that way. Usually kept the phone on his lap when he was driving.”
I wondered if Travis was also bad that way. It was a subject that would have to wait for another day. He let go of my hand and hooked his arm through mine instead. “Are you ready?” His voice wobbled a bit as if he were asking himself the same question. He’d been down there once, so it wouldn’t be the shock it was the first time, but that didn’t mean it would be any easier. His emotions were ripped up and raw.
“Ready,” I said, clenching my jaw against the cold that was biting its way through my jacket and the anxiety over what I was about to see. We started slowly down the hill. The vegetation underfoot was slick with dew. I was glad I’d taken the extra time to put on sneakers before leaving the house. Even so, halfway down my foot slipped. If Travis hadn’t been holding on to me, I would have tumbled all the way to Ryan’s car.
When we reached the bottom, I saw the accordion of twisted metal that had been the front end of the car. Although his airbag had deployed, it hadn’t saved his life. Or had it? It was possible he survived the crash, only to lie there unconscious in the cold with no one around to render help. It would take an autopsy to answer that question and many others.
“How did you ever see his car down here in the dark?” I asked.
“A flashlight. If I’d been lucky enough to drive by here during the day, it would have been a hell of a lot easier.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Examine the car and its contents, so I can be sure I didn’t miss something important. But don’t touch anything, not even with your gloves on. If this wasn’t an accident, you could destroy evidence.
“Evidence?” I said. “How could this be anything but an accident?”
“I’ll explain after you take a look.”
I followed him closer to the car. He pulled a small LED flashlight out of his jacket pocket to better illuminate the car’s interior. Ryan’s upper body was suspended by the seatbelt just above the airbag. He looked like a macabre marionette, waiting for its puppeteer to return.
“Tell me everything you see, even if you don’t think it could have played a part in his death. It’s our one chance before the police take over.” He handed me the flashlight and took another one from his pocket.
It was hard to see the entire front compartment without moving Ryan out of the way, which was clearly not an option. I did my best to view it from every window, every angle. I felt like I was at a movie theater straining to see the screen around the NBA player in front of me.
There was a half full to-go cup in one of the two cup holders. If there was a straw or lid, I couldn’t find it. They probably wound up under the seat from the impact of the car hitting the tree. The cup was plastic, the kind used for cold drinks, not the pressed paper used for hot drinks, since Styrofoam’s fall from grace. There was a box from a burger joint on the floor between Ryan’s feet, a partially eaten burger hanging out of it.
I looked in the back of the car on my way around to the other side. An umbrella, an ice-scraper, a Chinese takeout menu, and a pair of ratty old sneakers – things you might find in any car. I continued to the front passenger window. There was nothing on the seat. I looked down at the floorboard. I didn’t see the cell phone, until the flashlight glinted off the dark screen. I described all of this to Travis, who was either examining the ground for clues or trying not to keep staring at his friend’s body. I figured it was the latter.
I completed my circuit of the car and turned my attention to Ryan, himself. I was relieved that his eyes were closed, but my renegade mind still wondered if he’d seen death coming. When I moved the flashlight down his face, my stomach recoiled. I had to look away and take a couple of deep breaths before I could focus on him again.
Travis was instantly at my side. “Are you okay? You don’t have to go on if this is too much for you.”
“I’m good,” I managed to say without my voice wobbling. “I’ll be fine.” I had to be fine for his sake. I trained the light back on Ryan’s face, willing my stomach to stay put. There was the residue of something caked around his mouth and clotted on the front of his coat. The burger? That’s when I saw all the bloody scratches on his neck, his mouth, and his chin. Some of the scratches were so deep they were more like claw marks. Had he choked to death on the burger?
“Check out his fingernails,” Travis said.
Ryan’s left hand was hanging down between his body and the door, impossible to see. The right one lay in his lap, where I could easily see that his nails and cuticles were caked with dried blood.
“He did that to himself?” I knew the answer, but couldn’t keep the words from spilling out as my mind tried to come to terms with the horror of it. I stepped back from the car, my knees rubbery. It was a relief to look away from Ryan.
Travis put his arm around my shoulders and I leaned into him, until my legs felt like they could bear my weight again.
“How are you holding up?” I asked him.
“I don’t feel much of anything right now. Shock, I guess.”
He linked arms with me and we made our way back up the slippery hill to the road. “Come on, we’ll talk in the car.” He’d left the engine running for the headlights and the heater. It was blissfully warm inside.
“Okay,” I said. “What did you mean about