In the moring, Director Harlow comes to see me.
I have been waiting for this for a few day now. I did the arithmetic and understood that Harlow did not put me in containment to keep me here indefinitely. She put me in containment to create the conditions of a conversation.
She sits in visitor's chair that they bring inside along whoever is visiting. She looks the same as she always does, her reading glasses in her breast pocket. She never uses them. I asked her once why she carries them if she doesn't use them. She said they were her late mother's and she found them useful to have something to hold in difficult conversations. I found this so unexpectedly human.
she looks at me for a long moment with those sharp grey eyes and then she says, "How are you sleeping?"
A smirk appears on my face. "Beautifully," I say. "Best sleep of my life. This hard mattress is a revelation."
The corner of her mouth moves, which from Harlow is approximately equivalent to a laugh. "Dr. Mellissa says you've been complying."
"I figured that would be the only way to get out of this hell hole." She raises an eyebrow. I shrug my shoulders. We have known each other for eleven years, which in our line of work is longer than most partnerships survive, and there is a specific economy to the way we communicate that most people would find impenetrable.
"There's a case," she says.
And there it is.
"Tell me," I say, straigtening my back.
"There is a lighthouse." she finally says.
"A what?" I would be lying if I said I was not surprised. I knew they would give me a very low energy requiring case but I still needed to move, do something rather than rotting in a place that has so little space for doing anything.
"Twelve miles off the northern coast." Director Harlow continues without giving any heed to what I have just reacted.
"And what do I need to do there. What's the case?" I ask nonchalantly.
"I need you to listen very carefully Dr. Crow," She leans forward and the way she called me Dr. Crow, I knew it was important. "Keepers are going missing there."
Now this is something of my interest.
"Nobody knows where and how. All their things, everything remain at place while the people just disappeared. Three assisstant keepers while the head keeper remains." She pulls three papers out of the file she has brought here with her. I stand up from the white, hard bed and go towards the table, sitting on the chair bolted to the floor.
The three papers are profile information of the assisstant keepers that I suspect has dissappeared.
"Your mission is that, study and keep an eye on the head keeper and find out what could be happeneing there." She declares.
"Where is his information?" Director Harlow is already taking out another paper. This time there is no picture.
"There's no pictures?" I look at her.
"None provided." She shrugs her shoulders. "You will be going undercover as a weather and atmospheric researcher." She hands me another file. "This is you. Go through these before you arrive there." She stands up. "Also look up the lighthouse."
Then she leans down putting one hand, palm down on the table. " I need you to do a psychological assessment of the current keeper and…," She looks at me very seriously, "I want you to be very careful, though I know you will be."
"Also..," She straightens, "think of this as getaway. Get in touch with nature, some relaxation. Will be good for you."
I look at her for a long moment, and she looks back at me, and I think about the white room and the white walls and the nineteen days of scratching on the underside of a mattress, and I think about Daniel's mouth moving in the dark, and I think about Petrov Laszlo, whose name I will not find in this assignment and whose name Harlow has not mentioned and whose name sits in the back of my skull like a stone in a shoe.
"What about my investigation," I say. "The private one."
"It will be here when you get back," she says. "If you still want it."
The implication being that I might not. The implication being that the lighthouse might do something to the wanting, that distance and salt air and whatever has been happening on a rock twelve miles offshore might be sufficient to sand down the particular edge of what I have been carrying. The implication being that this is, among other things, a treatment.
I let myself look like I am considering this. I let her see me weigh it.
"When do I leave?" I say.