by Hugh Howey
“What did you imagine?” I ask, not sure I really want to know.
“I thought we would talk shells. I remember your old column. I was a fan. I thought I’d show you my collection, let you see what my life has been about. Because it hasn’t been about drilling for oil. All that goes on without me.”
“But you profit from it.”
“I do. And so did my grandfather. And he put that money to good use.”
I recall what Ness said about some things skipping a generation. Or was that me who’d said that?
“You do know you have a reputation,” I say. “Journalism isn’t a large field. Reporters hang out in the same circles.”
“And you believe everything you read in the papers?”
I don’t have a quick response to that.
“Why don’t we go inside while this is charging?” he asks.
“Why can’t you just admit what’s going on? Have you spent any time examining this? Your father fell in love with a reporter, and you seem to be fascinated by that. And now you’re older than he was then, and look at this pattern you’ve formed—”
“I don’t just date reporters.”
“Congratulations.”
“I don’t. It’s just … that’s who I meet. Who else do I socialize with? Have I dated more people than you have? Have I dated more reporters than you have?”
“Yes,” I say with confidence. I eye the battery booster; I could probably get to the end of that long-ass driveway on five minutes of charge, then call a cab or have the inn send someone. Ness glances at his watch.
“It’s ten,” he says. “Come inside so you don’t freeze. We don’t have to sit in the same room if you don’t want—”
“Tell me about Dimitri Arlov,” I blurt out.
Ness stares at me across the open hood of my car. Bugs swirl about, meandering toward the beacon that is the front porch light.
“Where did you hear that name?” he asks.
“Did he work for you?” I hug myself, shivering. I can’t tell if it’s from the cold or the adrenaline rush of confronting him about this.
“Dimitri is dead,” Ness says. “Come inside.”
I clutch my bag. “If I come inside, it’s just so I can show you something,” I warn him. “And I don’t think you’re going to like it.”
10
I leave my car charging and follow Ness back up to the porch. Again he gives me the overly polite Ladies first while waving me into the house. I feel clammy as I go over and over how best to show him the shells. I finally decide that Agent Cooper’s method was most dramatic. So I pull out a stool at his kitchen counter and sit down, my bag on the granite between us.
Ness pours himself another glass of wine. I wave him off before he can offer me any. “I need to drive,” I remind him.
“And I need to calm my nerves,” he says.
It’s almost as if he knows what’s coming. But he must be referring to our confrontation from earlier.
“What did Dimitri do for the company?” I ask.
“A lot of things. Dimitri was a bright man. I’m assuming you know that he passed away this year.”
“Yes. Were you close to him?”
“Very close.”
I open my bag and dig out the box. “I’m sorry for your loss, then.”
“The whole world lost something when Dimitri passed. They don’t make them like that anymore.” Ness raises his glass toward the ceiling and takes a large gulp. As I set the small case on the counter, I hear him nearly choke and fight to swallow. He eyes the plastic case like it’s a lump of radioactive material. I almost don’t need to open the thing to know what I needed to know.
“Tell me what you think of this,” I say. I open the box so that only I can see inside, and I pull out one of the lace murexes. I pass it to Ness. He barely looks at the shell as he takes it, is still eyeing the box.
“A murex,” he finally says. “In good condition.”
“In flawless condition,” I say. “Museum quality. One of a kind, wouldn’t you say?”
Ness nods. “Sure.”
“So explain this.”
I place the other two shells on the counter. I can’t believe I’m doing this. And maybe since I just had one battery fail me, I worry about the amount of charge the FBI recorder has. I should have turned on my phone recorder as well. I try not to worry about that and just concentrate on Ness’s reaction as he studies the three shells.
“They’re nice,” he says. But he sounds distant. Far away.
“Any idea where they might have come from?” I ask.
Ness shrugs.
“I think you know,” I tell him.
He reaches for the bottle of wine, but I grab his wrist and stop him. I slide the bottle of wine toward me and out of his reach. Ness looks at me with a film of tears across his eyes. Worry at being busted? Nerves?
“I think …” Ness hesitates. “I don’t know why he would have taken them. It doesn’t make any sense. He could have just asked.”
“So these are yours?” I can’t believe this. Ness looks staggered. Numb. He would probably tell me anything in this moment.
“Yes, they look … familiar. They were probably mine.”
“Where did you find them?” I ask, knowing they didn’t wash up on any beach.
“I … they came into my possession a while back. A few years ago.”
“They’re only a few years old,” I tell him. “They’re fakes. But you must know that. Any collector worth his salt would. These have been extinct for twenty years—”
“Thirty years,” Ness says.
“So explain them to me.”
“I can’t.”
“How much of your collection is fake?” I ask. I feel bolder the more beat down Ness appears. His confidence is gone and mine surges. Like a seesaw. I forget why I was even nervous. Why I hesitated to do this. There’s a Pulitzer in this. Henry will go ballistic. Hell, I could probably get the science section rolling again, I’ll have so much leverage.
“They aren’t fake,” Ness says, but his voice is a whisper. He doesn’t even believe himself.
I laugh.
Ness looks up at me. His eyes widen at some thought. “I can prove it. Hold on.”
He goes to the kitchen and rummages through several of the cabinets, comes back with a heavy mortar and pestle, the kind used to grind up spices. Ness takes one of the lace murexes and places it in the mortar. Before I can stop him, he cracks the shell with the pestle. I feel the destruction in my chest, like those are my bones snapping.
He fishes out a piece of the broken shell. All I can think is that even a fake of such quality could pay my rent for the year. Even with the buyer knowing it was fake!
“Look,” Ness says. “Wait. I’ll get a loupe.” He turns away from the counter, and I hear myself say that I have one. I fumble in my bag. Ness is animated again, excited. “Look at the shell wall,” he says. “You’ll see a pattern where the slug’s foot scraped back and forth.”
I look through the loupe. I know exactly what he’s talking about; I feel like reminding him that I studied to be a marine biologist. Instead, I say, “This could easily be part of the mold.”
I hear another crunch. The mortar is emptied onto the granite again, forming a second pile of debris. And as I pull the loupe away, there’s a third crunch as the last shell is cracked open.
“Look at these,” he says. “They should be different.”
I’m too busy taking in the fragments and the powder everywhere. It’s as thoughtless as the driveway. Senseless waste.
“Look,” he insists.
And so I do. And sure enough, the patterns are different. The shells are distinct. So, not from a single mold.
I pull the loupe away. Despite what I’m seeing, another thought occurs to me. Ness is a collector. And no collector in his right mind, whatever their collection is like, could destroy three lace murexes without batting an eye. Without flinching. Much less seem to recover their spirits w
hile doing so. His confession came by destroying the shells. All I can think of now is getting to the inn and calling Agent Cooper to let him know what happened here.
“You believe me, don’t you?” Ness asks. Almost with desperation.
“Sure,” I say. I check the time on my phone. “I think I should go.”
11
My car is beeping at me as I coast into the inn. I leave it with the valet, grab my overnight bag out of the trunk, and remind the young man a second time to make sure he plugs the car in. The registration desk is empty. There’s laughter from the bar, but the rest of the facility is winding down for the night. A man emerges from the back. I hand over my business card, ask for any available upgrade, and get a room key to a suite. I figure Henry owes me for yanking my story.
I find the suite and spend a few minutes unpacking. I catch a flash of myself in the mirror and decide that I look like a wreck. The first person I call is Agent Cooper. I try his cell and brace for the grumble of the half-asleep. Instead, he picks up on the first ring. Sounds chipper as he says “Hello.”
“Do you ever sleep?” I ask.
“Who is this?”
“Maya. Maya Walsh. From the Times.”
“Of course. Sorry. Been one of those days. So how did it go?”
I imagined him waiting around breathlessly for my call. Instead, it sounds like I’m just one of many things on his mind. “It went great,” I tell him. “The shells definitely link back to Ness … Mr. Wilde, I mean. And the case you had the shells in, did it belong to Mr. Arlov by any chance?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Because he recognized it. And when I asked him if he knew Mr. Arlov, he said they were very close. I think those were his exact words. And then get this—he wondered why Dimitri would have taken the shells from him. They were definitely Ness’s.”
“And you recorded all this?”
“It should all be on your device. Hold on a sec.” I unbutton my blouse, work one arm free, move the phone to my other hand, and wiggle out of my top. Unsnapping the back of my bra, I let it fall away and unclip the recorder from the underwire. “Yeah, the little light is still on. So I should’ve gotten it.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah, he tried to convince me the shells were real. Was adamant about it.”
“I bet.”
“He even had me look inside the torus at how all the wear marks were different. But I was thinking maybe the molds are a one-off, you know? A different mold for each shell.”
“Wait. He did what?”
“He showed me the foot rubbings for the slugs. Each one was unique. But I figure he just—”
“How did he show you the inside of the torus?”
I took a deep breath. My heart was racing from the long day and the coffee and the confrontation. “He cracked them open,” I said. “Which he never would’ve done if they were real, right? I mean, forget the value of the things. He’s a collector. If those were real—”
“Maya, you still have the shells, right? Tell me you have the shells.”
I rest a hand on the bathroom counter. My hair is mostly loose from my clip, is hanging around my face. “I told you, he … the shells. He had me look inside—”
I hear Cooper take a deep breath and let it out. I imagine him still at his desk, working all night in the pale glow of that solitary lamp, and now he’s probably pushed back from his desk, is running his hand up through his hair.
“So he destroyed our best evidence right in front of you,” Cooper says.
I don’t say anything. I just study myself in the mirror. The room spins around me.
“Look, it’s okay,” he says. “Just come to my office when you get back in town. Bring the wire. That might be enough to get a search warrant. And you may have spooked him into doing something dumb. We’ll keep an eye on him.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“It’s okay. He’s a crafty guy. If he wasn’t, we’d have nailed him by now. Get some sleep. We’ll regroup when you get home.”
“Okay,” I say. I appreciate him trying to make me feel better, but it doesn’t dent how idiotic I feel. “See you soon.”
“G’night, Maya.”
The phone clicks.
I check the time and debate calling my sister, who loves hearing about my fuck-ups and is great at making me feel better about them. I decide it’s too late. I run a bath instead, letting the water run hot enough to throw up steam. I’m about to step in when my phone rings. I answer immediately, expecting Agent Cooper or possibly even Henry.
“Hello, Maya?”
Ness. It’s crazy that I recognize his voice. “How did you get this number?” I ask.
“The internet. You’re listed, you know.”
I wiggle out of my pants and underwear and test the water. Scalding hot. I get in anyway.
“What do you want?” I ask. “It’s late.”
“I was calling to see if you were coming back tomorrow. To look at that journal some more. I need to let the outer gate know.”
“I don’t think so,” I say. “I think I got what I need.”
“Okay.”
There’s a long silence. Like he wants to say something else but doesn’t know how. I don’t allow myself to care or be curious. I just slip down until my shoulders are submerged, only my head and the hand holding the phone out of the water. I can feel the tension melt out of my muscles and joints in the hot water.
“I was thinking,” Ness says.
I wait.
“You used to do those shelling columns. And you’ve obviously got a story you’re working on about me. And you’re curious about those shells you brought over—”
“The ones you destroyed,” I say.
“So I was thinking maybe I could show you where they came from. Give you a shelling angle to your story. I think … I think I might be ready to share some of my secrets. My shelling secrets.”
I start to ask if by “secrets” he means how he forged the shells, but something even worse pops out of my mouth. “Did you kill Dimitri Arlov?” I ask.
“What—? No. Are you serious? Absolutely not. He was … a very good friend. Absolutely not.”
“Did you know that he stole from you?”
“No. I didn’t. And … you wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me,” I say.
“Okay,” Ness says. “But you’ll have to trust me. Come spend a week with me, and I’ll take you shelling. I’ll show you … where they came from. I think I want people to know.”
“You’ll show me where those lace murexes came from?” I ask, making sure I understand.
Ness hesitates. I wonder what he means by letting people know, what he means about sharing his secrets. Does he know the feds are closing in on him? Does he think he can save himself with a confession or by appealing to the press or to the public? Is he that desperate?
“Yes,” he finally says. “I’ll show you where the laces came from. Give me a week of your time, and I’ll give you the story of a lifetime. I promise.”
Part II:
Drowning
12
“You’re doing what?” Henry asks me.
“I’m going back up there,” I tell him. “For one week. And you’re sitting on my cable.”
Henry gets off my desk, and I unplug the charger for my laptop, wrap it up, and shove it in my bag.
“What do you mean, you’re going back up there? We’ve got to get your second piece out next week. We’re running part one again on Sunday. Everyone wants to know when you’re getting to Ness.”
“Sounds like she already got to him,” Dawn says from her desk.
I flip her the bird.
“This is bigger than that piece,” I tell Henry. I lower my voice to a whisper. Everyone in the newsroom is watching us. “This is front page. Real news. I’m telling you. Have I ever been wrong about these things?”
“You really want me to answer that?”
I check my email one last tim
e. Nothing that can’t wait. I shut down my computer.
“If you leave here without telling me what in the hell’s going on, you won’t have a job when you come back.”
“I won’t need this job when I come back.” I turn and walk past Margo’s desk toward the elevator. Margo smiles and wishes me luck. I don’t ask her what she means.
Henry hurries after me. We both know the other is bluffing: he won’t fire me and I won’t quit.
“Do you hear yourself right now?” he asks. “You’re the one who didn’t want to go in the first place. Is this the feds? What’re they investigating? You’re not fucking him, are you?”
I whirl around at Henry and point a finger at him. He nearly crashes into me. “I’m not fucking him,” I say. “Ness Wilde is exactly who I thought he was. His family stands for everything wrong in this world, and he sits on his private estate where everything is fake, nothing is real, and he sits in the middle of these … these shells within shells, and he is working on something awful. I’ve seen a glimpse of it. I mean—Henry, he has these trees that don’t belong there. Palm trees. Thousands of them. He’s totally messed up. His driveway is a freaking fortune in crushed shells.”
“That’s why we have to run these stories, Maya. The one on his grandfather is brilliant. It sounds just like him. Living alone, buying up land that he knows will be beachfront one day—”
I shake my head. “No. I told you, you can’t run that piece. Promise me. We skip to his father.”
Henry crosses his arms. I place a hand on his shoulder. “I’m going to bring you the piece of our lifetimes, Henry. I swear. I can feel it. You’re the one always saying that real journalism is dead. Dead as the seven seas. Well, this is the kind of story that will bring it back to life.”
“I need more than that, Maya. C’mon. Give me something. A hint. A headline.”
I hesitate. If I had the shells, I would show him those. And then I remember I have something a fraction as good. I dig my phone out of my bag and bring up the image gallery, sort through the recent pics. I find the one of the three lace murexes sitting on my kitchen counter. It’s the pic I sent to my sister as a gag.