The Secret of Rover

by Rachel Wildavsky

  “That was—that was—” Alex could not speak.

  But Tyrone could. He did not unlock his eyes from the road as his right hand scooped up his radio. “Ten-four,” he said tonelessly as the thing crackled to life.

  “’Sup,” replied a staticky voice, following an unintelligible jumble of numbers and codes.

  “2707 Wildermere Road,” said Tyrone matter-of-factly. “Damaged a civilian lawn.”

  “You read the address?” asked Katie, incredulous. “From midair? How did you manage to—”

  “We’ll check it out,” replied the staticky voice, and Tyrone hung up.

  “How did he see the address?” Katie repeated. “We were—”

  But no one was listening. They were moving, moving. They were farther from the city now. There was seldom much traffic here at the busiest of times, and now it had grown late and almost dark. There was no need for sirens, and Tyrone and the other drivers shut them down. They were whizzing silently at highway speeds through the nearly empty suburban streets, and they were almost home.

  While jumping lawns and scattering trash cans, they had not had to do anything but hold on. They had not had to think about the reason for their wild ride. But now they had almost arrived, and David and Katie remembered, and steeled themselves for what they had to do.

  “Don’t forget to sing that note hard on the third line—at ‘happy,’” said Katie tensely as they approached the house. Mrs. Ivanovna had always made them emphasize that word. “We have to sound just like Mom and Dad’s phone, and you know how we—”

  But David was focused on speed, not quality. “I figure in and out in fifteen minutes,” he said, looking at his watch. “We just have to be quick, and it shouldn’t take longer than that.”

  “Right, but Rover searches faster if it’s got a close match. So if it doesn’t—”

  And then they were there.

  Yellow police tape barricaded the once-welcoming driveway. Of course. The house was a crime scene now. Tyrone crashed straight through the tape and screeched to a halt by the front door. The three remaining cruisers slammed to a stop just behind them in a flurry of brakes and flying gravel. All four cars cut their motors but kept their light bars flashing. The sudden stillness was disconcerting.

  Alex looked around. “We’ll just wait right here,” he said.

  Openmouthed, Katie and David stared at him. Wait?

  “I don’t see the recording team,” he said tensely. “I don’t want you sitting around in that disaster of a house while we wait. Not for any longer than you have to.”

  “Uncle Alex, we have to practice!” said Katie. “We have to—”

  David looked at his wrist. “You’re both nuts,” he said tightly. “It’s seven thirty-three. Why am I the only one with a watch?” He punched the door open with his foot, slid from the car, and hit the ground running. Taking the front steps two at a time, he reached the front door, grasped the knob, and pulled.

  It was locked.

  David wheeled around. “The key!” he shouted. “Who has the key?”

  Katie and Alex had just left the car and gazed up at him, dismayed.

  “I don’t know,” said Alex, blinking. “I’ll have to make another call. I’ll have to think—”

  “We don’t have time for a call!” cried David, furious. “We don’t—”

  But Katie had dashed past the stairs and was rummaging in the flowerbeds by the side of the house. Now she rose with a grim face, a baseball-sized rock in her fist. She backed away from the house, eyeing the living-room window.

  “Let me!” said David.

  “I can do it,” she retorted.

  “I have better aim!”

  “But I have the rock,” said Katie, and with that, she sent it sailing. It flew like a precision missile and struck the window squarely in the center. Shattering glass fell like rain and the sound of it split the night.

  Alex’s face was frozen in consternation. But all four cops were standing beside their cars, watching with open mouths. “Ball one!” said one of them softly.

  They all looked up at the window. It was broken—so far, so good. But the bottom ledge was at least ten feet off the ground, and three deep rows of azalea bushes were planted beneath it, blocking their way.

  “Now what?” asked David sarcastically.

  Even as he spoke, Tyrone was slipping back behind the wheel. To everyone’s surprise, he started up the motor.

  “Where are you—”

  Tyrone did not listen. Instead, he executed a neat, three-point turn, backing the cruiser up, swinging it around, and then pointing its nose toward the house. Everyone heard him shift and then—as they all watched in awe—he rolled straight toward the azaleas.

  Shrubbery bent and snapped beneath his wheels as Tyrone’s front bumper smashed through the thick rows of bushes and stopped with a gentle bump at the wall of the house, right beneath the broken window.

  The cops, thought David again. The cops are great.

  Katie scrambled up onto the trunk of the car. Then she scooted across the roof and down the windshield to the hood. With a boost she would now be able to hoist herself in. She looked around for David.

  “Stop! That window’s not safe!” Once again, it was Katie’s uncle Alex, and this time he had a point. The center of the pane had vanished in a rain of glass, but jagged, unbroken shards lined the edges of it like teeth.

  For a moment they all stared up at it, trying to think.

  “Tyrone,” said David urgently. “Borrow your nightstick?”

  Tyrone’s car had rolled to a stop in a sea of azaleas that crowded thickly around his doors and windows, blocking his exit. He was stuck like a nut in a bar of chocolate.

  “I don’t have mine, or I’d let you use it,” said another cop, sounding worried.

  With a mighty grunt, Tyrone shoved on his door. Yet more shrubbery snapped and branches scraped across paint with a noise that assaulted their ears. But the door cracked open and the cop twisted his body out and reached his nightstick over to David.

  David climbed up beside Katie and, holding the sturdy club above his head in both fists, slammed it at the remaining shards of glass, clearing the window for entry.

  “Still gonna need a tarp, or something,” murmured a third cop, who was looking on with folded arms. A fourth booted cop stamped across the rubble of bushes at the back of Tyrone’s car, opened the trunk, and withdrew from it a heavy, folded woolen blanket. Hand over hand, the police passed this blanket to Katie, who threw it over the windowsill to cover any remaining glass.

  “I’m lighter,” she said, as David, tossing aside the nightstick, dropped to one knee and clasped his hands together into a step for her foot.

  She did not hesitate. With a grunt he shoved her upward. With a bend and a wriggle, she slid onto the rough blanket. A twist put her feet inside, and for an instant she sat on the windowsill, facing the darkened interior of the house.

  “Don’t land on the glass!” warned Alex.

  “I won’t!” And with a great push she disappeared into the silent house. For a fraction of a second the rest of them waited tensely. Then the blackened windows sprang to life and golden light poured out onto the driveway and the lawn beyond.

  Katie had turned on the lights. “Whooee!” cried the cop who’d gotten the tarp.

  They heard her footsteps within the house, running toward the entrance. There was a clatter of sliding bolts and then the front door swung open. David jumped off the car and headed for the stairs. Before he had even reached them, Katie was back in the living room and an exploratory scale could be heard from the piano.

  David looked at his watch as he slipped through the door. It was 7:39. They had arrived at the house at 7:33. It had been locked up tight, with no apparent way in. Yet now they were inside, and it had taken no more than six minutes.

  He still thought Katie should have let him throw the rock. He felt sure that if he’d thrown it, there would have been no shards left behind. Still,
he had to hand it to his sister. She knew how to hurry.

  She also, it turned out, knew how to freeze. Katie could not remember a single note of “You Are My Sunshine.”

  She sat on the bench, poised to play. The recording team had arrived. A silent, ponytailed man was setting up mikes and blowing gently into them, testing levels. His partner hovered softly in the background, watching the screen of a laptop computer. Outside on the grass they could hear the footsteps of the cops, who paced protectively on the gravel driveway, still lit by the glow from the open windows.

  It was all systems go and the clock was ticking, but Katie could not begin.

  “Think!” ordered David unhelpfully.

  “If I could only remember the opening, I’m sure the rest would just come,” she said desperately. “I had it memorized!”

  “Are you nervous?” asked Alex anxiously. “Is it the house?” It was perhaps the fifteenth time he had asked.

  No, Uncle Alex, she thought. It isn’t the house. It’s you.

  To be fair, she did know what he meant. The place lay in ruins. There by the window was the glass that she herself had broken. The rock she had thrown still sat in a puddle of shards.

  But the damage they had done was not the worst part. Looking behind her into the darkened rooms beyond, Katie could see that every object that had once sat on a table or a shelf now lay on the floor, broken. The pictures on the walls gazed out from behind broken glass. Someone had taken a knife to the cushions of the sofas and chairs, and each and every one of them was sliced open.

  So it was definitely bad. But it wouldn’t be nearly as bad if Alex would just stop talking about it.

  “It’s OK,” she said. “The house is fine.” On the wall before her was a photo of her father. Someone had driven the point of a knife through his eye. What hatred that person must have felt. Katie shut her own eyes tightly, drew a deep breath, and drove the thought from her mind.

  “Because it must be very distressing,” continued her uncle, “for you to see the—the hatred expressed by these—”

  Katie exhaled. Thank you, Uncle Alex.

  David, who had been listening, tried to remind them of what they had to do. “What key was it in?” he demanded. “The song.”

  “Well, if I knew that!” But prompted by his question, Katie tried again to remember the music she had once memorized. “Maybe G,” she said, reaching for the keyboard.

  “Or is it Trixie?” Alex again broke in. “I’m sure it brings back awful memories, Katie, just to be here.”

  Memories, Uncle Alex? Not really, but now that you mention it . . . And Katie was flooded by the recollection of the last time either she or David had played this piano. That had been the occasion of their first real fight with Trixie. She had emerged from that office, right there, and told David to stop, and wagged her fat finger . . .

  Katie shook her head, desperate to clear it. “What key did I just say—F?”

  “G,” said David.

  “But I’m sure that’s wrong.” And she dropped her forehead onto the keyboard in despair.

  “Let’s step outside,” said Alex in a voice full of compassion. “You need to rest. This is a terrible strain.”

  Now David actually moved his body between his sister and his uncle. If Alex said one more word, he thought, he might have to slug him.

  “Katie,” David urged, giving her shoulders a light shake. “Settle down. You’re tough, you know? You escaped from a locked house full of rats. Right? You stowed away on two different trucks. You stared down a woman with a gun and shot mace in her face! You can handle this!”

  “I can’t believe this is happening!” Katie cried. “I remember the middle part perfectly. But the part I need—the beginning—is completely gone. I can’t remember how it starts!”

  “So just play the middle,” said David. “It doesn’t matter!”

  “Yes, it does!”

  David took a deep breath and began to sing. “You. Are. My. Sunshine . . .”

  “Don’t forget ‘happy!’” And she leapt in and sang with him.

  My only sunshine . . .

  On the second line Katie’s fingers suddenly remembered the notes and she began to play. This was too much for Alex, who emitted a small, emotional yelp. Distracted, they rolled over “happy” without emphasis. But they finished the song.

  “That’s a wrap,” said David into the silence that followed their final notes.

  “Got it,” confirmed the man with the laptop, looking up at Alex. “It’s all here.”

  “Great,” said David. “Let’s—”

  “One more time,” said Katie.

  “You’re crazy!”

  “David, we had no piano at the top—but I can do it now! I just remembered the beginning! And later—we didn’t do it the same way at all. We didn’t—”

  David thrust his wrist before her eyes so that she could see the gleaming face of his watch.

  It was 8:04. Uncle Alex had said they would need to find their mom and dad and Theo by eight thirty their time for the Katkajanian police to be able to rescue them. And at nine o’clock . . .

  “See you in the car,” said Katie without further ado. And she jumped from the piano bench as if it were on fire.

  Alex had been huddled with the sound men, who were e-mailing the recording to Rover. But now he looked at his own watch and the significance of what he saw seemed to register with him, too. With uncharacteristic speed he hustled after David and Katie. All three of them streaked out of the house, down the front steps, and into the car. It was not the same car—that one was still stuck in the azaleas—but Tyrone was behind the wheel. He was poised for flight, light bar flashing and motor churning.

  Tyrone flicked a switch on his dashboard and the siren sprang to life, wailing into the silent streets. He peeled out of the driveway, and this time there was no stopping for seat belts.

  Less than an hour to go. Just the thought made Katie sick.

  “Uncle Alex?” asked David.

  Alex was staring at the speedometer, his face frozen in alarm. The needle was climbing toward sixty-five and they were still on narrow residential streets.

  The siren was very loud. David tried again, this time raising his voice. “Uncle Alex, does it have to wait till we get there, or can it start now?”

  Dragging his gaze from the dashboard, Alex looked puzzled.

  “Rover,” said David. “I mean Rover. It already has our song; you e-mailed it. So while we’re driving, can it start—”

  But at the mention of Rover, Alex’s distraction cleared and his eyes went wide with alarm.

  David broke off. “What?” he said, exasperated. “What now?”

  With a tiny movement of his head, Alex gestured toward Tyrone.

  Oh, yeah. David had forgotten. Rover was top-secret. So without conversation—and on two wheels—they turned out of the neighborhood and back onto the broad avenue that led to the city.

  Tyrone stepped on the gas, and the streets and houses around them dissolved into a blur as the screaming police car pointed its nose south toward Washington DC. Katie and David watched in silence. How far would they go? And where exactly were they headed? Despite their fear, both children were intensely curious about the location of the mysterious War Room.

  They were not far from the center of the city when suddenly Tyrone flipped a switch. The light bar went dark and the siren was cut off in mid-wail. At the same time he swung to the left and began a series of quick, sharp turns that took them deep into the residential neighborhoods north and east of downtown.

  Within minutes David closed his eyes. There was no point in keeping them open. He was thoroughly lost.

  Katie was close to lost too. But she struggled to keep track of the sequence of turns they were making. It had been a left by that hotel, then three blocks and another left, then right at that red building . . . She was weary, and even without this additional challenge, her nerves were stretched to the breaking point. But she had learned he
r lesson. Until her parents and her sister came home, she would know everything it was possible to know. These people would never keep secrets from her again.

  Night had fallen and the city had emptied. There was little traffic downtown and almost nothing to slow their course. In no time Tyrone swung to the right, bumped up a driveway, and glided to a stop.

  David opened his eyes. They had arrived at a modest brick row house. It sat in the dead center of a block of identical houses. David knew that there were dozens of blocks that looked exactly like this one in this part of the city.

  So that was how they hid the War Room, he thought. They hid it in plain sight.

  “This way,” said Alex. And he kicked the door open and headed for the house.

  David and Katie followed him up a short stoop and through the front door. There a sharp military voice ordered them to stop. “We’re cleared,” said Alex brusquely, thrusting an ID card at the guard.

  Wordlessly, the guard nodded toward a door that led to a narrow corridor. At the farthest end was a closed door. In front of that stood another guard, alert and unsmiling, with a weapon in his hands.

  Was it smart to run at full tilt toward an armed guard? Too late if it wasn’t.

  Katie and David broke free of Uncle Alex. Their footsteps pounded as they pelted toward the door where the guard stood. Just before they reached it, the soldier bowed his head and, with one arm, pushed the door open.

  It was the War Room, and they were in it.

  But what was wrong? Supposedly, this was the red-hot center of the hunt for the missing Bowdens. Supposedly, too, the hunt was down to the wire. It was less than half an hour until Katie and David’s parents and sister would be killed, and eleven minutes past the time when Alex said they had to find them if they wanted the police to find them alive.

  So common sense said the place should have been frantic with activity. But it wasn’t.

  It had been busy, from the look of things. A bank of computer screens against the far wall scrolled seemingly endless lines of complex text, and a wilderness of tiny lights flashed green and blue. The tables, desks, and chairs were all askew; the tiny, windowless space was strewn with crumpled paper cups, and a crushed pizza box had been jammed into an overflowing trash can.