This is how I find myself in Maine, driving down a dusty road in my electric car, with an FBI wire tucked in my bra. I agreed to wear the wire even though I explained to Cooper’s buddies that I plan on recording the entire interview with my cell phone. They said it made chain of custody easier on their end, and that often, what needs recording is said when the suspect doesn’t know they’re being recorded.
Whether or not I would take the assignment, of course, was never in question. I’m a reporter. Dropping these shells in my lap was like tossing a steak to a german shepherd. There was no way I wasn’t going. I want to see Ness Wilde’s face when I confront him with the shells.
What I did refuse was his offer to fly me up. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction or have him think I’m a pushover. A few hours in my car and two recharging stations later, I’m beginning to rethink that strategy. Just the guy’s driveway goes on for miles.
Eventually—with the second gate behind me—the road takes a sharp bend to the left, and some innate sense tells me that I had been approaching the sea and am now heading north up along the coast. If so, the ocean is hidden by the ridiculous trees. The palms bend toward one another like fingers about to interlock. Their dangling coconuts hang like a threat. But they form a tunnel that seems to hold the damaged world beyond at bay. They bore toward a place where people can be wealthy enough to ignore what’s happening around them.
That must be convenient for a man who played a large role in ushering our damaged world along. The irony is rich: Ness Wilde has made billions not just by drilling oil, but by collecting the shells made rare—and valuable—by the burning of fossil fuels. A double whammy.
Glancing down at my battery gauge, I imagine for a moment the horror of not having enough juice to get to my hotel tonight. When I look back up, a view of the house breaks through at the end of the road. As I get closer, I see that it looks a lot smaller than I imagined it would. On Google Maps, the house appeared audacious, a sprawl of additions and add-ons connected by breezeways and boardwalks.
But arriving from the front—because of the way the house is chopped up to stagger down the dunes toward the sea—the portion visible from the drive looks reasonable. Even adorable. Like a house rather than an estate. A small front porch with reproduction gaslight fixtures frames a pebble-bed walkway. The roof is pale pink tile. The siding is white clapboard with bright-blue trim. The house appears as though it belongs in the Caribbean, not on an isolated and prohibitively expensive patch of rocky Maine shoreline.
My car’s tires crunch to a stop on the gravel circle. The drive continues and disappears around a high sandstone wall studded with conch shells. A six-or seven-car garage full of boy toys is probably just around the corner. As I get out of the car, trying to reconcile the incongruous modesty of the front of the house with all I know of Ness Wilde, I see that the drive isn’t paved with gravel at all. It’s made of tiny shells. Millions of them. Billions. Most are ground up into tiny bits from years of traffic, but some are recognizable. Some are even miraculously intact. Periwinkles, ceriths, ravenelis, and cockles.
The sight of so many shells spread out for so base a purpose causes my heart to sink. It’s the sort of blow that stuns you so deep, the intelligent side of your brain can’t signal to the emotional side that this effect might be on purpose. Here, the front of the house seems to say, I am a normal person. And then: Here, you are parking on a fortune in shells. And while reconciling these two: Here, I’m opening the door so that you meet me in a weakened state—
“Maya? From the Times?”
I turn from the audacious and miles-long carpet of shells to the foremost collector of them in the world. Ness Wilde stands on his small front porch, the door behind him open, and I realize that I’m half in and half out of my car, my hand resting numbly on the handle. Composing myself, I grab my bag from the passenger seat and shut the door. I force myself not to look down at my feet, but I can hear the tiny shells crunch beneath my shoes, little screams from hapless victims.