A Matter of Will
PRAISE FOR ADAM MITZNER
Dead Certain
An Amazon Charts Most Sold and Most Read Book
and Authors on the Air Finalist for Book of the Year
“Dead Certain is dead-on terrific . . . It’s an entertaining and riveting work that will more than hold your interest.”
—Bookreporter
“Consistently compelling . . . Adam Mitzner is a master of the mystery genre.”
—Midwest Book Review
“There are several twists and turns along the way . . . creating a big amount of tension . . .”
—The Parkersburg News and Sentinel
“[Dead Certain’s] leading coincidence, which is quite a whopper, is offset by an equally dazzling surprise . . . It packs enough of a punch to make it worth reading.”
—Kirkus Reviews
A Conflict of Interest
A Suspense Magazine Book of the Year
“A heady combination of Patricia Highsmith and Scott Turow, here’s psychological and legal suspense at its finest. Adam Mitzner’s masterful plotting begins on tiptoe and morphs into a sweaty gallop, with ambiguity of character that shakes your best guesses, and twists that punch you in the gut. This novel packs it. A terrific read!”
—Perri O’Shaughnessy
“Mitzner’s assured debut . . . compares favorably to Presumed Innocent . . . Mitzner tosses in a number of twists, but his strength lies in his characters and his unflinching depiction of relationships in crisis. This gifted writer should have a long and successful career ahead of him.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
A Case of Redemption
An American Bar Association Silver Gavel Nominee for Fiction
“Head and shoulders above most . . .”
—Publishers Weekly
Losing Faith
“Tightly plotted, fast-paced . . . Startling . . . A worthy courtroom yarn that fans of Grisham and Turow will enjoy.”
—Kirkus Reviews
The Girl from Home
“An engrossing little gem.”
—Kirkus Reviews
OTHER TITLES BY ADAM MITZNER
Never Goodbye
Dead Certain
The Girl from Home
Losing Faith
A Case of Redemption
A Conflict of Interest
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2019 by Adam Mitzner. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503905139
ISBN-10: 1503905136
Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant
To my family—Susan, Rebecca, Michael, Benjamin, Emily, and Onyx.
CONTENTS
START READING
Will Matthews had . . .
WINTER
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SPRING
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SUMMER
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FALL
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
“We are our own devils; we drive ourselves out of our Edens.”
—Goethe
Will Matthews had never seen a dead body. Not even his parents’ bodies—he’d chosen not to view them before their burials, knowing that witnessing them that way would haunt him. But now he was staring straight into the lifeless eyes of a corpse lying in a pool of blood on his balcony.
A part of him couldn’t make sense of it. As if it were a movie, the ending of which had veered unexpectedly away from the foreshadowed climax, he wanted to press the rewind button and watch the last few minutes unfold again to see what he’d missed.
Of course, if he had a rewind button for life, he would have pressed it sooner than now. Maybe when he first met Samuel Abaddon. Even earlier than that, truth be told.
What filled Will with even greater panic than the sight of the dead body was the knowledge that this wasn’t the end of his story. Far from it. There were choices to be made, and the resolution was still uncertain.
Most terrifying of all, Will couldn’t discern whether he should write himself as the hero or the villain in his own autobiography. He had a feeling that the decision he was about to make would set him irrevocably down one path or the other.
The one thing—maybe the only thing—he knew for certain was that once he made his choice, there would be no turning back.
WINTER
1.
“The devil I understand, but what’s with the other one?”
The question was confusing on so many levels that Will didn’t know quite how to reply. Or if he should say anything at all.
The query had been posed by a well-dressed man of about forty, with the clean-cut features of a movie star and the distinguished graying temples of a college professor. The fact that he wore what appeared to be a very expensive suit, probably Italian, meant the man wasn’t in academia, however. Banking, most likely, although that was Will’s profession too—and he wasn’t nearly as well attired.
Business suits were not unusual at Madison Square Garden on a weekday, especially in the box seats only a row up from the ice. The man hadn’t even loosened his tie, though, and that made him stand out, its perfect dimple telling the world that he was never not working. By contrast, Will had jettisoned his tie on the subway, and he’d taken off his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeves the moment he found his seat.
The question was the very first thing the well-dressed man had said to Will, even though they’d been watching the game side by side for nearly an hour. Will found it a little disquieting that the stranger’s first foray into conversation—at a hockey game, no less—was to pose a metaphysical quandary concerning the existence of good and evil.
“I’m sorry. Were you talking to me?” Will asked.
He’d been so distracted by the question that he had momentarily forgotten about the game. It was as if everything else—the crowd, the clicking of the players’ skates on the ice, the slapping thwack of the puck—had been silenced while the man engaged him.
“That’s right. I understand all about the Devils. There’s this local legend in South Jersey about a kangaroo-like creature with the head of a goat, bat-like wings, and a forked tail that supposedly stalks the Pine Barrens and makes this bloodcurdling scream. So it mak
es total sense that a hockey team from Jersey would be named the Devils. I mean, you’re not going to name them the New Jersey Tomatoes just because they hail from the Garden State. Am I right about that?”
Will didn’t respond. Though he heartily agreed that the New Jersey Tomatoes made for a lousy hockey team name, he assumed the man’s question was rhetorical by the fact that the man didn’t pause.
“But what the hell was the thinking behind calling a hockey team from New York City the Rangers? As far as I know, there were never any rangers in New York. That’s a Texas thing.”
Will had been a Ranger fan his whole life—his allegiance handed down from his father, who had talked of Rod Gilbert, “Steady” Eddie Giacomin, and Jean Ratelle, the stars of the team in the 1970s, with the type of reverence usually reserved for biblical figures. Which meant that Will knew every last bit of trivia about the Blueshirts, including the answer to the man’s question.
“It’s actually a play on words,” Will said, turning to look straight at him. “The original NHL team from New York was called the Americans. Then, in the mid-1920s, a guy named Tex Rickard established a new hockey team to play in the original Madison Square Garden. He called his team Tex’s Rangers. Not the cleverest of puns, but still. Anyway, the Americans folded during World War II, but the Rangers here have been going strong ever since. The ‘Tex’ part of their name didn’t stick around for very long, thank God.”
The man considered the explanation carefully, as if waiting for a better one to come to him. Then he said, “I’m not sure God should be thanked in any way, shape, or form for the Rangers, my friend. If anything, you should be cursing him for the fact that you’ve only won a single Stanley Cup in the last seventy-five years.”
“This is our year,” Will said.
The man looked hard at Will. “I see that you’re a man of loyalty and commitment. That’s a rare find in our troubled times, especially for someone of your generation. A sad fact but true, I’m sorry to say. So rare that I make it a point, whenever I find such a man, to buy him a beer. And I’ll tell you, I can count on one hand how many such beers I’ve purchased over the years.”
Will knew the man was blowing smoke, but he appreciated the effort at camaraderie. The truth was that Will wasn’t rare in any way. If anything, he was certain he fell into the dime-a-dozen category. Or worse, his life was a cliché. A twenty-seven-year-old from the Midwest who dreamed of hitting it big on Wall Street. He would have been glad to live as a cliché, but he had a nagging fear that he was about to become a cautionary tale instead. If things didn’t change in a hurry, he would be the twenty-seven-year-old Midwesterner who had failed to make it in the Big Apple and been forced to slink away with his tail between his legs and nothing to show for his efforts—no job, no money, no girl, and no dreams.
Without waiting for Will to accept his offer, the man flagged down one of the Garden’s hawkers. A kid lumbered down the aisle to the front row, a tray of twenty-four enormous cups of beer strapped to him like a backward backpack.
“Give me two,” the man said. He turned to the woman on his other arm. “Make that three,” he amended, even though she hadn’t indicated she wanted a beer. In fact, Will realized he hadn’t yet heard the sound of her voice.
Will had noticed the woman as soon as the couple had taken their seats. She could be described as drop-dead gorgeous without a hint of hyperbole. Rita Hayworth in Gilda, which Will knew about only because of the first poster used to hide Andy Dufresne’s tunnel in Shawshank Redemption. She was as tall as her companion—taller than Will, and he was a shade under six feet. Some of that had to do with the woman’s heels, which had caught Will’s eye because wearing stilettos to a hockey game was hardly de rigueur. Neither was her low-cut little black dress. It was her hair that had captivated Will, however. Torrents of deep red curls. The kind you knew weren’t out of a bottle. She was closer to Will’s age than to her companion’s, but gave off a vibe like she’d never once dated anyone near her own age. She was the type who dated college boys in high school, and in college went out with her professors.
“That’s thirty-three, with tax,” the beer boy said.
The man handed him a crisp fifty and said, “It’s all for you.”
Then, turning toward Will, he raised his cup in a toast. “To the Devils.”
Will hesitated, wondering if “a man of loyalty and commitment” should toast a rival team, but then he decided that playing along would be good manners. He brushed his cup against the man’s, after which they both took a slug of beer. Out of his peripheral vision, Will saw that the woman had placed her cup on the ground without imbibing.
The man extended his hand. “Samuel Abaddon,” he said. His grip was firm, but not so strong he was trying to prove anything.
“Will Matthews.”
“Mr. Matthews, this is Evelyn Devereux,” Samuel Abaddon said.
“Eve,” she said, extending a delicate hand to Will. “Sam always likes to be so formal.”
Will took Eve’s hand in his, surprised by its softness. He wondered if it was because her skin was truly that supple, or if it had just been such a long time since he had experienced a woman’s touch that he was no longer familiar with the sensation.
“Pleasure,” he said, which wasn’t something he normally said when introduced to someone, especially a beautiful woman. He felt almost compelled to kiss the top of her hand, but when she broke their connection, he was extremely thankful that he hadn’t.
“As I’m sure you’ve surmised, Will, Sam here is one of the last great romantics. He thought that a hockey game was an appropriate Valentine’s Day date.”
Will had momentarily forgotten it was Valentine’s Day. Even though this was yet another Valentine’s Day he was spending alone, this year it had been to his advantage. He had obtained his ticket by fluke. Arthur Bargonetti, to whom he had only ever said a passing “How you doing?” in the hall, said he’d come into possession of just one ticket for tonight’s game and couldn’t use it on account of the holiday. Will assumed that Bargonetti had offered it to half a dozen people who’d turned it down for the same reason before Dateless Will became its lucky recipient.
“I think Will here had the right idea. He’s flying solo tonight.”
Eve shot Sam a thin smile. “Another crack like that, my dear, and you’ll be flying solo tonight too—if you catch my meaning.”
Will definitely caught her meaning. Even though he considered himself the biggest Ranger fan he knew, he had no doubt that if he had been in Sam Abaddon’s shoes, he would have made different plans for the holiday.
When Will focused back on the ice, he saw that the Devils had a two-on-one breakaway. The Devils’ center was streaking up the middle of the rink. After crossing the blue line, he deked; that provided just enough space to slide the puck into the right-hand corner, beyond the Ranger goalie’s outstretched glove.
The crowd let loose a monstrous roar. Even in the Garden, the Rangers’ home ice, the contingent of Devils fans was sizable. That made some sense, because it was actually easier to get to the Garden from the Port Authority or Penn Station, the public transportation entry points for New Jerseyites, than it was from most locations in New York City.
“You can’t stop the Devils,” Sam said. “We’ll get you every single time.”
A few minutes later, the siren ending the second period blared.
“Another round, my friend?” Sam asked.
Will had barely made a dent in his first beer. Peering over, he saw that Sam’s cup was empty. Protocol required Will to pick up the tab now, which meant he couldn’t decline buying another beer for himself too.
“On me, Sam,” Will said.
Will raised his hand like a second grader, trying to get the attention of the beer boy. Between the second and third periods was of course prime time for beer sales, and the hawker had turned his back to them to service a group across the aisle.
“Christopher, my man,” Sam called out.
&
nbsp; The beer boy—who was apparently named Christopher—turned around. When he did, Will searched his uniform for a name tag, but the huge button he wore said only $11, TAX INCLUDED.
Will reached into his pocket and extended two crumpled twenties.
“How many?”
Will waited a beat, deferring to Sam to ask Eve whether she wanted another beer. But Sam didn’t say a word.
“Eve, are you having another?” Will asked.
“No, thank you. As someone once said, I pride myself on keeping my wits about me while all others are losing theirs.”
She said this with a knowing smile, leaving no doubt in Will’s mind that she knew she was quoting Kipling. Her head was cocked in Sam’s direction, suggesting that her companion was prone to overindulgence.
“Two, please,” Will said.
With the beers in hand, Sam said, “While we wait for the Zamboni to do its thing, why don’t you regale Evelyn and me with the Will Matthews story?”
“Not too much to tell, actually.”
Although a modest man of accomplishment might have said the same thing, in Will’s case it was 100 percent accurate. There truly wasn’t much to his biography.
“Come now,” Sam said. “Every man is the protagonist in the novel that is his life. It’s all in the way you tell it. I’m certain you have a truly compelling origin story. Start with where you were born.”
Will felt uneasy about being put on the spot, but shutting down his new friend would lead to a very uncomfortable third period. “A small town in Michigan.”
Sam held up his right hand, fingers tight together. Someone from another state might think he was swearing an oath, but a Michigander like Will knew that Sam was making a map of the state with his hand, asking Will to point out from where in the “mitten” he hailed.
“Top of the middle finger,” Will said. “Cheboygan.”
“Ah, the old sewing needle,” Sam said, referencing one of the two theories for the translation of the city’s name.
“I take it you’ve been,” Will said.
“As a matter of fact, I spent some of my formative years just a stone’s throw from Cheboygan. My father was stationed at Alpena when I was in middle school, and for a year of high school.”