The Best Friend Read online

  PRAISE FOR ADAM MITZNER

  A Matter of Will

  “Business, blood, and deception help make this an exciting and fast-moving yarn. Fine fare for thriller fans.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “[An] engrossing thriller from Mitzner (Dead Certain). The action never flags in this exciting cautionary tale.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Mitzner is a master at making the complex understandable for the average reader while not letting the intricate details of the subject matter that supports his story weigh it down . . . A Matter of Will [is] a perfect vacation read.”

  —Bookreporter

  “Mitzner really knows how to craft a page-turning mystery. A cover-to-cover read.”

  —Press & Guide

  Dead Certain

  An Amazon Charts Most Sold and Most Read Book

  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

  A Matter of Will

  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 © 2020 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: 9781542005753

  ISBN-10: 1542005752

  Cover design by Rex Bonomelli

  To the real F. Clinton Broden,

  2018 Texas Criminal Defense Lawyer of the Year,

  and my friend since high school.

  CONTENTS

  START READING

  PART ONE

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  10.

  11.

  12.

  13.

  14.

  15.

  16.

  17.

  18.

  PART TWO

  19.

  20.

  21.

  22.

  23.

  24.

  25.

  26.

  27.

  PART THREE

  28.

  29.

  30.

  31.

  32.

  33.

  34.

  PART FOUR

  35.

  36.

  37.

  38.

  39.

  40.

  41.

  42.

  43.

  44.

  45.

  46.

  47.

  48.

  49.

  50.

  51.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  My guiding principle is this: guilt is never to be doubted.

  —Franz Kafka

  PART ONE

  * * *

  CLINT BRODEN

  January–June 1986

  1.

  Twenty-seven-year-old women are not supposed to drown in the bathtub.

  And yet that was what Nicky told me happened. At least that’s what I thought he was saying. His words came haltingly, interrupted by sobs, so it was difficult to be sure. But not many things sound like “Carolyn drowned in the bathtub.”

  I had come to the office early that morning, although God only knew why. I had no clients requiring my legal services. Prior to Nicky’s call, I was doing little beyond trying to will the phone to ring.

  I think he asked me to come to his house, but after all this time, I can’t be certain. It would have been a natural reflex for me to rush to my best friend in his moment of need.

  After hanging up with Nicky, I considered calling my wife to share the news before heading up to Mount Vernon, but I thought better of it. Anne was likely still asleep, having been out late the previous evening filling the midnight slot at an open mic night somewhere in the Village, where she sang a few songs in the hope that an agent, record executive, or casting director would be in the audience. The death of my closest friend’s wife justified waking her, but I decided instead to allow Anne to live a few more hours in ignorance so that I could break the news to her in person.

  When I arrived at Grand Central, the big board told me that the next train heading to Mount Vernon had already begun boarding. I ran toward the track without even buying a ticket. It didn’t occur to me until the train had left the station that I didn’t know Nicky’s address. He’d moved out of Manhattan only a month before, and the one time Anne and I had visited, Nicky picked us up at the train station. But I remembered it being walking distance from the Mount Vernon stop—one of the house’s selling points, Nicky had said.

  The train was nearly empty, which wasn’t surprising considering I was doing the reverse commute slightly after the morning rush hour. It wasn’t until we emerged from the Manhattan tunnels and bright sunlight streamed through the window that the magnitude of what had happened began to take hold. Nicky’s new bride was dead.

  Nearly an hour later, the train stopped at Mount Vernon. That was about twenty minutes longer than how Nicky had represented the trip when I teased him about
being a suburbanite.

  At the pay phone outside the station, the 411 operator gave me Nicky’s street address: 116 Cahill Road. I recalled that their street was off the main drag, but to make sure, I asked the woman behind the ticket counter for directions.

  “Straight along Main Street and about three blocks up it’ll intersect with Cahill,” she said.

  It was actually five blocks away, but the streets were short. After I made the turn down Cahill, I didn’t need to check the numbers to ascertain which house among the nearly identical white split-levels was Nicky’s. It was the one with the police vehicles in front and an ambulance in the driveway.

  A few neighbors had gathered on the sidewalk to gawk. I walked past them with purpose. A young police officer in uniform greeted me at the front door. He must have recognized me from court, because he asked, “Are you a lawyer?”

  “Yes,” I said with a smile that was inconsistent with the reason for my presence; back in those days, it wasn’t often I was recognized as a lawyer. “Where is Mr. Zamora?”

  The cop pointed into the house. As soon as I stepped into the foyer, I spotted Nicky. He was in the corner of the living room, his back to me. His attention was taken by two plainclothes police officers: big, burly men with thick heads of hair in sports jackets and slacks.

  I made my way straight to my friend. Before I could intervene, one of the cops intercepted me with his body. “I’m Detective Lynch,” he said. “And your name is?”

  “Clint Broden.”

  “Mr. Broden, we’re going to have to ask you to wait in the other room while we take Mr. McDermott’s statement.”

  Nicky’s surname is Zamora, not McDermott, which was Carolyn’s family name. She had retained it for professional reasons. Nicky didn’t react to the misidentification. He also hadn’t acknowledged my presence. When I caught his eye, all I got back was a blank stare.

  “Nicky,” I said, hoping to break him out of his trance.

  He blinked a few times, as if he’d just awakened. “Clinton,” he said, almost like a question. It was then I noticed that his shirt was still damp. He must have found Carolyn in the bathtub and pulled her out.

  Nicky and I weren’t huggers. Even at our weddings, where we’d each stood up for the other as best man, neither of us engaged in any greater expression of intimacy than a pat on the back.

  The one exception to our mutual disdain of physical affection occurred when we were twenty and both juniors in college. My parents had been killed by a drunk driver the night before, but word had reached me only that morning. I had returned home in a daze, unable to fathom the sea change in my life that had come without warning and left me alone in the world. That reality came painfully to the fore when I reached my house and realized that there was no reason to enter. Instead, I went to the Zamoras’ home, which was across the street.

  Nicky and I were both only children, and we’d moved in and out of each other’s homes in our childhood with such regularity that we were more like brothers than most actual brothers I knew. I was sitting in their living room when Nicky entered. He must have hightailed it down from Vermont the moment his parents told him the news.

  He ran right up to me and pulled me in, holding on tight. I think he even kissed my cheek. I know he said, “I love you, Clinton. We’re your family now.”

  That memory was front and center when I saw Nicky on the day Carolyn died. As he had with me, I embraced him and held on tight.

  “I’m sorry, Nicky,” I said. “You know I love you.”

  The police allowed us a moment but not much more than that. “Excuse me,” one of the detectives said. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave.”

  Nicky and I separated. “I’d like to have a minute to talk with Nicky, alone, please,” I said.

  Detective Lynch didn’t give my request a moment’s thought. “No,” he said flatly. “We’ll be done very soon, and then you can talk with Mr. McDermott. But until then, I’m going to need for you to step into the other room.”

  To emphasize that my presence was no longer welcome, Detective Lynch’s partner put his hand on my elbow. Their dismissal made my blood run hot. I yanked my arm away from him.

  “His name is Zamora,” I said sharply.

  “What?” the detective said.

  “Carolyn—his wife—her last name is McDermott. His name is Nicky . . . Nicholas Zamora.”

  Detective Lynch tried to put things back on track. He turned to Nicky and said, “Our apologies, Mr. Zamora.”

  Nicky made eye contact but didn’t seem present. He gave no verbal response, and his expression remained unchanged.

  Detective Lynch stared at me until I met his gaze. “You’re still going to have to leave, sir.”

  I took another look at Nicky, who was obviously in shock. I played the only card I had.

  “I’m Mr. Zamora’s lawyer. So I’m going to have to ask the two of you to give my client and me a few moments to confer. After we talk, then he can continue with you.”

  This was checkmate. The only thing that trumps the police is the constitutional right to counsel.

  The other detective looked like he wanted to take a swing at me, but Lynch seemed to understand that the power dynamic had shifted.

  “We’ll be right outside,” he said.

  I led Nicky into the guest bedroom. When Anne and I first got the tour of the house, Carolyn had made no pretense about this space being earmarked to become a nursery. The moment we entered the room, Nicky crumpled onto the bed. His hands immediately came up to his face, almost as if he were trying to hide. Then he began to cry, his body convulsing with each sob.

  In short order, a knock came on the door. I was opening it when a push came from the other side.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” Detective Lynch said, “but Detective Mercado and I need to finish taking Mr. Zamora’s statement.”

  “Okay,” Nicky said, wiping his eyes.

  I moved slightly to the side, allowing the detectives to face Nicky. At least now they weren’t going to ask me to leave.

  Had I truly been wearing my lawyer hat, I would have shut down the interrogation. But despite what I’d told the detectives, I was there as Nicky’s best friend, not his lawyer. That Carolyn’s death might lead to a criminal charge was the furthest thing from my mind.

  Detective Lynch resumed the questioning. “Mr. Zamora, did you call 911 as soon as you woke up, or did some time elapse between when you got up and saw your wife was not in bed with you and when you made the call?”

  Carolyn’s workday typically started early, especially after they’d moved to the suburbs and she’d tacked an hour on to her commute. Nicky’s job, on the other hand, had a starting time of five o’clock, when he began tending bar at a dive in Murray Hill. I had no idea what time he began working what he’d always referred to as his “real” job, writing during the day, but I doubted very much it was as early as Carolyn’s workday began. All of which meant that Nicky being asleep after Carolyn had already left their bed was hardly surprising and certainly no reason for him to call 911.

  Still, Nicky seemed baffled by the question. “When I woke up, Carolyn wasn’t in bed. I don’t know what time it was, but I remember thinking that she was probably already at work. I got out of bed and went into the bathroom to . . . you know, brush my teeth. And . . .”

  He resumed the position he’d been in before—hands cupping his face—and he let out a wail.

  It was a sound I previously couldn’t have imagined coming out of Nicky, and I flinched visibly at it. But the detectives didn’t budge. Instead, Detective Lynch continued his line of inquiry.

  “Were you home last night?”

  Nicky needed a moment to answer that too. “Yes. I don’t work on Sundays.”

  “And after you saw your wife in the bathtub, what did you do next?”

  “I . . . I pulled her out and started doing CPR,” Nicky said.

  The mental image made me wince again: Nicky vainly trying to blow
air into Carolyn’s lungs.

  “Did you think your wife might have taken her bath in the morning?” Detective Mercado asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “So you don’t recall if she took a bath last night?”

  The question implied the answer. Carolyn must have drowned the night before, which meant that she had been dead for hours when Nicky pulled her from the tub and administered CPR.

  Nicky didn’t respond. It seemed as though the question hadn’t registered.

  Detective Mercado asked it again. “Did your wife tell you she was taking a bath the night before?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “Do you remember your wife telling you last night that she was taking a bath?” Detective Mercado asked slowly, leaving a beat between every word, as if talking to someone with a mental defect.

  “She did take baths at night. That way she could sleep later in the morning.”

  Detective Lynch: “Did she take a bath last night?”

  “Yes . . .”

  Detective Mercado: “So she went in the bath last night, and you discovered her this morning, and yet you still thought that she might be alive?”

  “Is she alive?”

  Nicky sounded hopeful, as if everything he had experienced up until that moment might have been wrong. I shuddered at the thought that the detectives would now be forced to tell him again that his wife was dead. It would be like him hearing it for the first time.

  Better that it come from me.

  “Nicky,” I said softly, “Carolyn’s dead. She drowned in the bathtub. The detectives are asking you how she looked when you first saw her this morning.”

  I turned to Detective Lynch to gauge whether my paraphrase of his question was what he was trying to ascertain. He didn’t give me any reaction. His focus remained solely on Nicky.

  Nicky shook his head slightly, as if pushing away something negative—the horror of what he’d seen, perhaps. Then his face dropped back into his cupped hands.

  2.

  I first met Carolyn at a bar in midtown Manhattan. It was in late September 1985. The last vestiges of Hurricane Gloria were leaving the tristate area. The storm’s impact had been less severe than predicted, but the rain was still coming down hard enough that I was drenched by the time I stepped inside.