The Best Friend

by Adam Mitzner

  It degenerated from there. He called me an old man. I yelled that he was a poser. There were taunts at my manhood, at his reputation.

  All the while, Samantha continued to stand by mutely. She finally pulled me aside and said, “You need to leave.”

  “Not without you,” I said.

  “I don’t mean the party, Nick. I mean you need to go back to LA. Give me some space out here, and we can talk again in a few weeks. I’ll stay here tonight, and until you leave for LA.”

  I stormed out of the house alone. It was only once I was in the car that I realized what was still to come. The other couples would depart shortly, leaving Samantha and Tyree alone. She would tell him that she had sent me back to LA, and then he’d do what he had undoubtedly been thinking about doing with my wife from the moment he’d cast her as his leading lady.

  I considered turning the car around and heading back to the party to settle matters with Tyree once and for all, but decided that discretion was the better part of valor. That meant waiting until morning before raising the issue with Samantha. We’d both be calmer and could discuss what had happened at the party like adults. If she wanted me to go back to LA, I would, but not before telling her that I would await her return, either when the shoot ended or whenever whatever was going on with her and Tyree had run its course.

  And I’d make sure that Samantha knew that I loved her and wanted us to stay married.

  30.

  Less than two hours later, Samantha stepped into our bedroom. Her gait was shaky, a testament to the fact she had probably taken another pill after I left and was still high as a kite. Her expression confirmed that she was feeling no pain.

  “I left my phone here,” she said.

  I hadn’t realized it until then, but she was right. Samantha’s phone was atop the charging pod on her nightstand.

  “Can we talk?” I asked.

  “There’s nothing to say,” she answered.

  “Please. I . . . just need to say a few things.”

  “Then talk.”

  I was lying in bed, with her standing above me, her arms folded across her chest. It was the absolutely wrong dynamic for me to profess my undying love. I wanted her to sit, to listen to me. Unfortunately, there were no chairs in the bedroom, and I knew suggesting she join me in the bed, or even asking her to sit on it, would be a nonstarter.

  “Okay,” I said, getting out of the bed. “Can we do it outside?”

  I was wearing only my boxer shorts, so I grabbed a T-shirt but still felt underdressed, especially with Samantha still in the little black dress and high heels she’d worn to the party. She shrugged and followed me out onto the deck. The rain had stopped, but the air was still moist, giving the impression that this was a short interlude in the storm and the skies would open again shortly. For the moment, though, the air had cooled substantially, and I felt a pleasant sea breeze, the likes of which we hadn’t experienced in days.

  This was my chance. To convince Samantha not to leave me. To swear that we could still be happy together. To beg, if it came to that.

  The first step in that process was to get her to sit down. I motioned for Samantha to sit beside me on the outdoor sofa.

  “Everything is soaking wet,” she said, holding her ground at a distance as she steadied herself against the deck railing and shivered slightly in the breeze.

  She was right about that. I’d felt the wetness the moment I sat.

  “Okay. Let me first say that I’m so sorry for losing my temper. I love you, Samantha. And I’ll do anything—and I mean anything—to keep us together. Just tell me what it is, please, and I’ll do it.”

  Her expression remains etched in my mind, and yet, no matter how many times I conjure it, I can’t for the life of me decipher what she was feeling in that moment. Would she reciprocate? I wondered. Or tell me my feelings were unrequited?

  Her initial response was to hoist herself up onto the deck’s railing, as if to regain the high ground for the discussion to come. But the railing was slick with rain, and her hand slipped as she sought to balance herself. Without a word, she fell backward, over the edge of the deck. A half second later, I heard the thud of her body hitting the ground.

  For a moment, I couldn’t move, paralyzed by the unreality of the moment. Then I leaped up, ran to the railing, and peered down. The moonless sky rendered everything so dark that I couldn’t see the ground, much less my wife.

  I shouted her name. No response came back.

  Racing downstairs, I held out hope that she was okay. But as soon as I came outside and saw her, I knew by the unnatural turn in her neck that she was dead. Her expression was not one of horror or fear; instead she appeared contemplative, as if still considering what I’d said.

  This was the second time in my life I had stared at my wife’s dead body. The shock of someone being alive one moment and gone the next felt much like it had thirty-four years ago. But whereas Carolyn’s death had freed me from a life I didn’t want, Samantha’s ended a marriage I had loved more than life itself.

  As shock gave way to grief, I began to cry, at first haltingly, then sobbing beyond my control. Samantha was so young, she’d had a full life ahead of her, and now she was gone. I wished more than anything that she’d never come home, that she’d stayed at Tyree’s. We could have sorted things out later. Or never. The last thing I’d wanted was for her to die.

  As I convulsed, I cradled Samantha’s head in my arms. I brought my hand up, and even though I couldn’t see the blood in the dark, I could feel its sticky wetness on my palm.

  That’s when I realized I would be blamed for Samantha’s death. No one would believe that Samantha had fallen from the deck. They’d assume that, having gotten away with murder once, I’d thought I could do it again.

  That realization flipped a switch in me. My tears subsided and my grief moved aside, replaced by the impulse of self-preservation.

  I had to act quickly or else be blamed for killing Samantha.

  Our neighbors were all weekenders. One of those inverse relationships of the ultra- wealthy—the more expensive the real estate, the less often it’s occupied. The houses on either side were dark inside, and while the exterior lights of the modern home to my right were fully illuminated, I assumed that they were set on a timer to scare off would-be intruders approaching from the beach, and that no one was actually home on a Wednesday night.

  My choices had become binary. I could call the police and explain exactly what had happened and likely be arrested for a murder I did not commit, or I could carry Samantha into the ocean, swim out as far as I could, and then hope the currents did the rest.

  “I’m sorry, Samantha,” I whispered.

  The summer before my senior year in high school, I worked as a lifeguard at Jones Beach. To get the job, I had to swim fifty yards in the ocean in under fifty seconds, or something like that. During training, I learned everything from the fireman’s carry to pulling live bodies through surf. That had been almost half a century ago and the last time I’d tried either.

  With great effort, I hoisted Samantha onto my shoulders. That was the hard part. Carrying her out into the surf was not as difficult as I had feared. The ocean was much colder than I anticipated, but the shock lasted only a second, until Samantha and I were fully submerged. I adjusted her body so I now had her in a towing grip. Looking back to shore, I spotted the lights of our neighbor’s house, but when I turned toward the horizon, I saw only darkness.

  It didn’t take long to get farther out than I’d be comfortable going if I weren’t trying to discard a dead body. Maybe a hundred yards. But this was no time for half measures. I needed to go farther. As far as I possibly could.

  That turned out to be maybe another fifty yards. By that point my arms ached, and I was tired enough that I worried about my ability to swim back safely. The lights on the shore were small now, like pinholes in the distance, and the waves had started up again, causing me to swallow the brine more than once.

 
; I took the deepest breath I could and dived under, pulling my wife’s lifeless body with me. I descended as far as I was able, probably no more than ten feet. Then I pushed down on Samantha’s corpse with my feet and launched myself up.

  I waited there, treading water, praying that Samantha would not rise to the surface. My visibility was limited, but it seemed as if I had succeeded in my objective.

  The deed done, I swam a steady breaststroke toward the lights in the distance. For what seemed like an hour, I didn’t seem to be getting any closer to shore, the current continually pulling me back. Finally, my knees hit sand and I could stand. By then I was as exhausted as I could ever remember being, on the verge of passing out. I fell to my hands and knees, panting.

  I felt a spatter of drops on my back. The rain had begun again. I looked up at the sky with gratitude. Like the ocean, it would be my accomplice in washing away all evidence of what had happened that evening.

  As my adrenaline waned, I was overwhelmed by loss, by my shame. And once again I began to sob.

  31.

  Shortly after nine the following morning, a knock came at the front door. I waited a full two minutes (watching the numbers on my phone switch over) before heading downstairs to give the appearance that the visitor had awakened me. I added to that half a minute to brush my teeth and throw on a robe. Catching my reflection as I headed downstairs, I thought I’d properly captured the look of a just-awakened man my age who had not spent the prior evening watching his wife fall to her death from the balcony or dragging her body into the ocean.

  It surprised me how easily I was able to compartmentalize. But the path ahead was clear, and the stakes too great for me to falter. I had no choice but to play this part—the concerned husband, unsure about his wife’s whereabouts. In a few days, even if Samantha’s body weren’t found, she would be presumed dead, and then I could grieve.

  A young female production assistant had been assigned the task of gathering Samantha for the day’s shoot. The poor kid had been calling Samantha nonstop for the last two hours, thinking that my wife was too hungover to answer the phone, when in reality, I had turned the ringer off and let the calls go to voice mail.

  “Hi, Mr. Zamora,” she said cheerfully. “I’m so sorry to wake you. Tyree Jefferson sent me here to see if Ms. Remsen was at home.”

  “I just woke up,” I said, “but isn’t she at the shoot?”

  “No. That’s why he asked me to come here. He thought that maybe she had overslept or something.”

  My strategy was simple: Show no concern, not at first anyway. Give off the I’m sure Samantha is on her way vibe.

  “Come in. I’m pretty sure Samantha’s not here, though. I’m sorry, what was your name?”

  “Katlyn.”

  “Katlyn, I’m sorry you came all the way out here. She’s probably held up in traffic.”

  Tyree must have given Katlyn instructions not to return to the set without Samantha, because she didn’t budge. “The thing is, Samantha was supposed to be on set at seven.” She looked at her phone. “It’s 9:12. She’s never been late before, and Mr. Jefferson’s worried about her.”

  I put on my slightly concerned face. “Uh, okay. Let me call her. My phone’s upstairs. Just make yourself comfortable, and I’ll be down in a second.”

  Once I was alone in the bedroom, I prepared myself for the next level of distress. A husband whose wife had not shown up for work, and who wasn’t answering her phone.

  I walked back downstairs with a confused expression. “Her phone is on the nightstand. She must have forgotten it this morning.”

  “She never arrived on set,” Katlyn said, a note of concern in her voice suggesting I was not treating the situation with the appropriate urgency.

  I sighed. My way of telling her that the studio was making something out of nothing.

  “Let me check if her car’s in the garage,” I said with exaggerated exasperation.

  After opening the door to the garage, we both saw the red Porsche convertible that Samantha had rented, right beside my black one. “Did the studio send a car for her this morning?” I asked, now acting as if I were confused by this turn of events.

  If Samantha had to be on set extremely early, they’d typically send a car. But a seven o’clock call didn’t qualify for that treatment, which meant that she should have driven herself out to Montauk this morning.

  “No. Her call wasn’t until seven. That’s the regular time, and she always drives herself.”

  I rubbed my face like an increasingly worried husband. “It’s not like Samantha not to show up for her call,” I said. “Do you mind calling Tyree and see if . . . I don’t know, maybe she’s there by now? Maybe she called an Uber.”

  Katlyn did as I requested. Even though the phone was pressed against her ear, I could hear it ring.

  “Is she there?” Tyree said without a hello.

  “No. Her phone’s still here and her car is in the garage. Her husband says he has no idea where she is.”

  “Let me talk to him,” I said.

  As Katlyn handed me her phone, I focused on showing her and Tyree that I was now concerned about my wife’s whereabouts, which required that I pretend as if any acrimony from the previous evening was the last thing on my mind.

  “Tyree, it’s Nick. You sure she didn’t show this morning? I mean, that she’s not in her trailer or on a walk or something?”

  “Yeah. We’ve looked everywhere for her. If her car’s still there, I don’t see how she got here.”

  “Right. I thought Uber maybe. I gotta tell you, I’m worried.” Then I laid the groundwork for my defense. “I’m not sure she even came home last night. She hadn’t by the time I went to sleep, and she wasn’t here this morning.”

  My lie was met with a few moments of silence. Then Tyree said, “I drove her there at about one thirty, so I know she went home last night.”

  I considered challenging him on that but decided the less I said now, the better. “If she shows up, call me immediately. You know my number?”

  I knew he didn’t.

  “Give it to Katlyn,” he said and disconnected.

  I gave Katlyn my phone number and asked for Tyree’s. She said she wasn’t at liberty to give his number out, so she gave me hers instead. We promised each other we’d call immediately upon any sighting of Samantha.

  As soon as Katlyn’s car receded from view, I considered what I’d do if Samantha had legitimately disappeared. If I truly had no idea of her whereabouts.

  The logical assumption, if Samantha hadn’t arrived at work or even taken the car, was that she’d gone somewhere on foot. But where? A walk along the beach? A morning swim in the ocean? Either way, a concerned husband would check that out.

  When I exited the back of the house, I saw that the previous evening’s rain had washed away all evidence that I’d been on the beach. So after having worried about leaving my footprints in the sand last night, I made new ones today. I even jogged to the shoreline, in case forensic techs could determine my level of urgency by my gait.

  I didn’t go into the water. That seemed too much, too soon. But, standing at the water’s edge, I took some comfort that Samantha’s body hadn’t floated back to shore on the first tide.

  After this bit of reconnaissance, I returned to the house. I sat there, staring out at the ocean view for the next forty-five minutes, trying to convince myself that I’d done nothing wrong, not really. I was not responsible for Samantha’s death. It was an accident. And everything I was doing now fell under the category of extreme measures to survive extreme circumstances.

  At ten, I called Katlyn. “Samantha still isn’t back,” I said, “and now I’m really worried. I think . . . I think I should call the police.”

  32.

  The police arrived within an hour of my call. By then, I had showered and put on clothes.

  More importantly, I’d rehearsed how this would go. My guiding mantra was that I was completely in the dark. I wouldn’t deny that th
ere had been drinking and drugs the night before, or even that Samantha and I had fought at the party, after which I’d stormed off alone. All of that was easily verified. Instead, I would say that these things happened from time to time. Showbiz people, you know.

  I would be emphatic, however, that Samantha had never come home last night.

  Two plainclothes detectives knocked on my door. Detective Yuhas was the younger of the duo, midthirties at most. It wasn’t hard to imagine that his thinning blond hair had once been down to his shoulders, and he was probably the kind of kid who’d surfed more than he studied in high school. His partner, Detective Hibbitts, had a more hardened look, sporting a goatee with a hint of gray. He carried himself with a swagger that suggested he was a second- or even third-generation cop.

  Befitting his seniority, Detective Hibbitts took the lead. “Mr. Zamora, I understand that your wife didn’t show up for work this morning. That she was expected on the set in Montauk at seven a.m., and you don’t know where she is, and you haven’t heard from her at all today. Is that right?”

  “Yes. That’s right. The last time I saw her was at this party we went to last night at the home of her director, Tyree Jefferson. There was a lot of drinking and some drug use, and things got a little out of control between Tyree and me. I wanted us to leave, but Samantha said she needed to stay behind to smooth things over. She said she’d be home later. I left the party . . . I don’t know . . . my guess is sometime around midnight. I waited for an hour or so for Samantha, but then I went to sleep. Tyree told me he dropped her off at about one thirty, but I didn’t hear her come in. And when I woke up, she wasn’t here. She forgot to take her phone to the party last night, and it’s still here. And her car’s in the garage.”

  Detective Hibbitts asked, “Have you looked in every room of the house?”

  I could feel my already-heightened heart rate kick up a notch. I hadn’t gone into the guest rooms or guest bathrooms, of which there were four each. It hadn’t occurred to me to do so. But the question suggested that a concerned husband would have left no corner of the house unchecked.