by Penny Warner
“The food here at Alcatraz was supposed to be the best in the entire prison system,” Ranger Huynh announced. “Each prisoner was assigned a row and a seat, such as A-1, A-2, and so on. They had only twenty minutes to eat, and gobbled the food up quickly before other prisoners could steal from their trays.”
Cody had a sudden thought. The ranger had said the rows and seats were lettered and numbered. Maybe the torn message they’d received earlier referred to seats in the dining hall, rather than chairs, like they’d first suspected. As the large group of students followed the ranger to the kitchen area beyond, Cody waited until her dad was inside and out of sight, then she waved the other Code Busters back toward the benches.
“S’up?” Luke asked, watching the rest of the crowd file into the next room.
“The benches!” Cody said softly so the group wouldn’t hear. “I think that’s what the message meant. Remember how the letter B stood out from the other letters? And the number two was mentioned a couple of times? Maybe they refer to Seat B-Two in the dining hall.”
“Let’s check it out before Stad and Mr. de Lannoy notice we’re missing,” Quinn said.
And my dad, Cody thought.
Quinn ran over to the second row of benches, the others right behind him. “This is Row B,” he said, and he pointed to the second seat. “And here’s Seat Two.”
Luke leaned over for a closer look. “Nothing here, dude, except some scratches. Probably carved by the prisoners with their forks.”
Cody shook her head. “They didn’t have metal utensils.”
“No, but some did have shivs,” Quinn said.
M.E. scrunched her nose. “What’s a shiv?”
“Like a homemade knife,” Quinn answered. “Prisoners use anything they can, like a toothbrush handle or broken comb, and sharpen it to a point. I saw a picture online that was made from a pork chop bone.”
“Yikes,” Cody said. The thought of a shiv made her shiver. “Wouldn’t want to be stabbed with a pork chop bone.”
“I wouldn’t want to be stabbed with anything,” M.E. added.
Luke knelt down and peered under the bench. His eyes widened, and he reached underneath.
“You found something!” Cody said, excited. “What is it?”
He pulled a small piece of paper from the underside of the bench. Remnants of clear tape were still stuck to it.
“A note!” M.E. squealed, then clapped her mouth shut.
“Shh!” Quinn reminded her. He glanced into the next room, hoping the teachers hadn’t heard them.
“Open it!” Cody whispered.
Luke unfolded the white sheet of paper, looked at it, then held it up for the others to see.
(4 // |) |_ 3 () // + # 3 VV 4 + 3 |2
Code Buster’s Key and Solution found on this page, this page.
“I don’t get it,” he said, after scanning the message. “What’s it supposed to mean?”
Quinn took it from Luke’s hand. “Hey, I recognize this code. Online gamers and hackers use it when they don’t want just anybody reading their messages. They call it LEET code, or 1337, which is LEET written backward and upside down. It uses numbers and symbols to make letters.”
“How do you decode it?” Cody asked, studying the message.
“It’s pretty easy. Just sound it out phonetically. Watch.” Quinn took out a ballpoint pen and his notebook from his backpack, and wrote: (,) (_) ! // // “What do you see?”
“I see some parentheses, a comma, a dash, an exclamation mark …”
“Okay, now think of the symbols and numbers as alphabet letters.”
She deciphered the first letter. “That looks like a Q,” she said aloud. “Then U. Then I N N. Quinn!”
“Right. So now try to read the words on the other side.”
“You’ve already figured it out?” Cody asked him. He nodded. She flipped the paper and studied the first series of numbers and symbols.
(4 // |) |_ 3
The first symbol resembled the letter C. She wrote the letter underneath the symbol. Next came the number 4. What letter did it look like? Sort of an A. She jotted it next to the C. The next symbol was obvious—N—made with diagonal lines. The letters D and L were also easy. The last letter of the first word was tricky, though. It just looked like the number 3.
“I’m stuck,” Cody said.
Quinn wrote down the number 3, then held it upside down for Cody to see. “Sometimes the letters are reversed.”
“So the number 3 must be an E.” She added the letter, then read when she’d deciphered: “Candle!”
“That’s awesome,” M.E. said. “Let me try the next one.” She took the notebook and the pen from Cody and studied the next two symbols: () //
“Oh, it’s an easy one,” she said. “It has to be ‘on.’ ”
“My turn,” Luke said. He borrowed the pen and notebook and went to work on the next word: + # 3. “The plus sign looks like the letter T. The pound sign—it kind of looks like the letter H. And 3 means E. It spells ‘the.’ ”
“Quinn, you want to finish it?” Cody asked.
Quinn nodded and took the notebook and pen from Luke. “There are two Vs, which make W. Then the number 4, which is an A. The plus sign means T; 3 means E—”
“R!” Cody said. “It’s made with a 1 and a 2, side by side. It spells water.”
“ ‘Candle on the water’?” Luke read the decoded message. “Okay, what’s that supposed to mean?”
M.E.’s eyes brightened. “Hey, did you ever see that old movie Pete’s Dragon?”
The others shook their heads.
“What’s a dragon got to do with this?” Quinn asked.
“In the movie,” M.E. explained, “there was this orphan kid named Pete who found an invisible dragon. A lighthouse keeper and his daughter take him in because bad guys are chasing him. Anyway, when a storm comes, the lamp at the lighthouse goes out, so the dragon lights it again with his fire and saves the ships out at sea.”
“I still don’t see—” Quinn interrupted.
“The lady in the movie sang a song called ‘Candle on the Water,’ which meant—”
Before M.E. could finish, Cody said, “Lighthouse!”
Quinn broke into a grin. “So this message is telling us to go to the lighthouse here on Alcatraz!”
Cody saw a shadow pass over the note in Quinn’s hand.
“I’ll take that!” Ms. Stadelhofer said, holding out her hand. Quinn handed it over.
The Code Busters—busted!
They’d been so focused on trying to solve the mysterious message, they hadn’t noticed the teacher walking up behind them. “You four are supposed to be in the kitchen, following the ranger’s tour! I have half a mind to send you back to the ferry for the rest of the trip.”
Cody felt a wave of heat wash over her body. Standing in the doorway to the kitchen was her father. He had witnessed the whole embarrassing scene. Great. She was in trouble, and her dad knew. Was that disappointment she saw in his eyes? Or something else?
“Now get in there and don’t let me catch you wandering away again.” Stad pointed to the kitchen. “Otherwise, there will be no free time for the four of you to explore the island on your own.”
Quinn began clicking the ballpoint pen he still held in his hand. To anyone else, the clicking probably sounded random. But to the Code Busters’ trained ears, the clicks meant something. Quinn was signaling them in Morse code:
Code Buster’s Key and Solution found on this page, this page.
Cody and the others hurried toward the prison kitchen, where the ranger was telling more stories about prison life. She glanced at her dad as she passed him in the doorway. To her surprise, instead of looking angry, he winked at her.
What did that mean?
Slipping into the kitchen area before he could hover, she met up with the rest of her classmates. When she looked back, he was whispering to her teacher.
Uh-oh. What was that about?
“�
�� like to hear my favorite story about Alcatraz?” Cody caught Ranger Huynh saying, her eyes dancing with excitement. A cheer rose from the crowd.
“All right, follow me downstairs to the dungeon cells,” the ranger said, waving them on. “That’s where the prisoners were sent if they caused any problems while incarcerated here on the Rock.”
“You mean, the Hole?” Matt the Brat shouted in Cody’s ear. She fanned his peanut butter breath away from her face.
The ranger didn’t seem surprised at the question. “Actually, they called those dungeon cells solitary confinement, but yes, some of the prisoners referred to it as the Hole, since it was smaller and darker than the regular prison cells.”
“Al Capone died in one of them,” Matt continued, grinning as if he was sharing privileged information.
“No,” the ranger said, “that’s not true. There are a lot of stories about Alcatraz that aren’t true. It’s part of my job to separate fact from fiction.”
She led the group out to the main hallway, then down a flight of steel steps to what appeared to be a basement. As they moved along, Cody saw a row of closed doors. Ranger Huynh opened a thick door with her key, then Geoff, the former Alcatraz guard who had tapped out the tap code earlier, pulled a lever that caused the inner barred doors to slide open. She and Geoff opened three more cells, allowing all the students to see inside the cells.
Cody took her turn peering into the tiny room, which was no larger than a closet in her house. She shuddered. Nothing but a cot, a toilet, four walls, and a cement floor. As the students viewed the cells, most grew quiet, and others gasped. How awful it must have been there. She wondered how many men had spent time in that small, cramped space.
“Anyone brave enough to go inside?” the ranger said.
A few hands shot up, including Luke’s and Matt the Brat’s. Cody knew Luke was always ready to take a dare. But Matt? He was just showing off.
“All right,” the ranger said. “You, you, you, and you—step inside.”
Luke, Matt, a classmate named Jodie, and her twin brother, Jeffy, grinned at being selected, and walked into the tiny rooms.
“Now, how about if I close the doors,” the ranger said, “so you can get the full effect?”
Jodie and Jeffy both dashed out of their cells.
“No way!” Jeffy said.
“It’s creepy in there even with the door open,” Jodie said.
Luke remained in the cell, his arms crossed, his jaw cocked. Matt’s face grew red, and Cody could see the fear in his eyes, in spite of his bravado. Seconds later he stepped out and said, “I have claustrophobia.” He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket, ignoring the rolling eyes of the other students.
“Fear of small spaces isn’t uncommon,” the ranger said. “But can you imagine spending hours, days, even weeks in there?”
Cody saw Matt visibly shudder.
The ranger turned her attention to Luke, the lone survivor. “What’s your name?”
“Luke LaVeau.”
“Are you ready, Luke?”
Cody’s eyes widened as her friend gave a single nod. She heard a creaking sound as Geoff pulled the lever to close the barred door.
“You okay?” the ranger asked.
Luke nodded. Cody saw the muscles in his crossed arms tighten.
Ranger Huynh closed the heavy outer door. Luke disappeared from sight.
“Can you hear me in there, Luke?”
The students hushed, listening for any response from their classmate.
Nothing.
Then came the faint sound of tapping:
Code Buster’s Key and Solution found on this page, this page.
“That’s Morse code!” Cody said, frowning. “Maybe he’s in trouble!”
The ranger reached for the door.
“Leave him in there!” Matt the Brat shouted, and laughed.
Cody shot him a dirty look. Ranger Huynh ignored him. She opened the door, signaled Geoff to pull back the bars, and then released the temporary prisoner.
Luke grinned proudly as he stepped out. Cody was relieved to see he was fine and just teasing them with his Morse code emergency call.
“How was it, Luke?” she asked him.
He shrugged as if it were no big deal. “Cold. Dark. Kind of weird.”
“Can you imagine spending even twenty-four hours in there?”
Luke raised his eyebrows and shook his head. “No way. I’d probably lose it.”
Cody cringed at the thought of spending any time inside a confined space like that. She didn’t even like being alone in an elevator for more than a few seconds. Maybe she had a touch of claustrophobia, too. Being in the Hole would totally creep her out.
The ranger gave Luke a pat on the back as he moved to stand next to Quinn. “The rest of you,” the ranger continued, “feel free to step inside for a few seconds, if you dare. Meanwhile, I want to tell you another one of my favorite Alcatraz stories. It began right here, in solitary confinement.”
As the students took turns stepping into the small open cell, Ranger Huynh began her latest tale. “Over fifty years ago, there was a prisoner here named Diamond Dave Melvin. He was a jewel thief who tried to escape the Rock and was put in solitary confinement. Diamond Dave was known for the drawings he scratched into the walls of his prison cells.”
Cody pictured the story as the ranger told it. She could just see a tall, handsome jewel thief, like the ones in movies who wore fancy suits and drove big cars by day, then changed into dark, hooded clothes and crept into houses at night.
The ranger continued. “There’s one of his drawings, there.” She pointed a flashlight on the back wall of the cell, revealing scratches that looked like a tall building. “Can you tell what it is?”
A few hands went up, including Luke’s.
“A house?” one of the students asked.
“Close,” the ranger said. “Anyone else?”
“A spaceship?” Matt asked, no doubt trying to be funny.
“Nope. I’ll give you a clue. One night a man walks out of a house. As he leaves, he turns the light on instead of off. Why?”
Cody raised her hand, then gave the answer.
Code Buster’s Solution found on this page.
“That’s right!” the ranger said. “Unfortunately, we never found a map that he drew that would lead to the jewels he’d allegedly hidden.”
“When they released him from solitary confinement,” Ranger Huynh said, “they found more of his drawings. He’d carved the shapes using a sharpened edge of a food tray, and even used some of the food to draw with.”
“But it was dark in there when you closed the door,” Luke said.
“That’s right,” the ranger said. “Even though he couldn’t see anything in that dark room, he used his imagination to create his lighthouses.”
Cody frowned. Here was a thief who spent time on Alcatraz, yet he apparently shared a love of lighthouses, just like her. She knew about all the different parts of a lighthouse—the lamps, lenses, lantern rooms, day beacons, lightning rods. Her mother had once asked her why she loved lighthouses so much. She’d said she saw them as safe places. Her mother had given her a hug and said, “Don’t worry, you’re safe with me.” But in spite of knowing that her parents would take care of her, she still liked the idea of a place where everything was peaceful, even during a storm.
The ranger continued her story. “Diamond Dave seemed to be obsessed with the lighthouse on Alcatraz. He could see it from the exercise yard, and the guards said he used to stare at it for hours. When the bell rang for the prisoners to come in, he was always the last one inside. That lighthouse was built to warn sailors of dangers in the fog-shrouded waters of San Francisco Bay. But for Diamond Dave, I think it was a symbol of freedom. What do you all think?”
While the students raised their hands and offered answers, Cody’s mind drifted. She wondered if the lighthouse might have symbolized something more than freedom for Diamond Da
ve … such as the hiding place for his diamonds? But if that was true, how could the jewels have made it to Alcatraz without being found by the guards? And if they had been hidden in the lighthouse, they probably would have been found by now.
Her mind immediately jumped to the note they’d found under Seat B-2 in the dining hall. It had read: “Candle on the Water.”
A lighthouse.
“Whatever happened to Diamond Dave?” Quinn asked.
“He was finally released, after serving his time,” the ranger answered. “Then he just disappeared. No one ever saw him again. Rumor has it that he reclaimed the diamonds his buddies had hidden for him, following clues they’d left while visiting him in prison. But no one knows where the diamonds—or Dave—ended up. He could have died before finding his treasure. He could have been double-crossed by his so-called pals. Or he could have found the diamonds, left the country, and lived out his days in style. It’s one of those unsolved mysteries that makes Alcatraz so interesting.”
Cody looked at Quinn, then Luke, then M.E. Their eyes were wide.
“All right, everyone, this concludes the tour,” the ranger said. “Feel free to visit the gift shop and explore the rest of the island, as long as you stay out of the restricted areas.”
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Quinn whispered to the other three.
They nodded, grinning.
M.E. stuck out her index finger. “The e-mail you got on your computer, Cody,” she said, raising another finger, and another, and another, as she listed the clues. “The torn messages we found on our front porches. The clue we found under the bench. The story of Diamond Dave and his drawings.”
Cody was about to blurt out the key to the clues M.E. had just listed when she noticed Matt the Brat standing nearby, obviously trying to overhear them. She raised her finger to her lips to silence the others, then finger-spelled what she’d been about to say:
Code Buster’s Key and Solution found on this page, this page.
“It has to be that!” Quinn said. “So let’s go!”