Doug Larsen - A Portrait of My Grandfather

Gunderson grabbed me by the throat. “Listen, you bastard,” he hissed. “The only way you’re getting out alive is if you cooperate! Now, start talking!”

I stared at him. Every line in his face screamed “hatchetman!” And as I looked into his eyes, I knew. I knew for dead certain. “You did it,” I said. “You killed Al Melfred.”

“Oh, Jesus!” Hawkey wailed. “Somebody knows!”

“How did you find out?” Van Ives demanded. “How the hell does he know?”

“Shut up, both of you!” roared Klemhauser.

I kept looking at Gunderson, who was backing away. “They approved it,” I told him, “but you did it. You were in charge of the project.”

Gunderson reached under the table and pulled out something. I stared helplessly as he raised it up, and I saw it was a sawed-off shotgun. “Step aside,” he snarled at Hawkey and Van Ives, and they moved away from me, but didn’t let my arms go.

I stared down the barrels with wide eyes, and opened my mouth to protest. Gunderson triggered both barrels right at my chest from a distance of four feet. It felt like a mule kicked me with both feet, and the impact roared and echoed in my ears and my chest disintegrated into a shower of crimson blood. I was hurled backwards, and they must have let me go because I slammed back into the wall and my head hit the corner of something hard that might have been the dresser in my bedroom. Gunderson shot me again, but the sound and the pain was duller and farther away, and the image wasn’t nearly as clear; as I slipped slowly away I kept thinking, sorry Grampa, so sorry, I’m so sorry…

“He’s coming around,” a strange man’s voice said.

“Thank God,” my mom’s voice said.

I tried to see, but couldn’t. A searing pain cut through my head, and I groaned.

“Take it easy,” the man’s voice said. “You’re got a slight concussion. Lie quietly.”

“Wha…”

“It’s OK, Greg,” Mom said. “I came home early to see how it went. I found you unconscious. This is a paramedic.”

“Your heart was going a mile a minute,” the paramedic said. “I’ve got you on a sedative.”

I tried to talk. I had to talk. “I—it—”

“Shhhhh,” Mom said. “Lie still.”

I screwed up my nerve, and flinched as I felt for my chest. I took several seconds to realize that it was all in one piece, even though it was throbbing in pain.

“His heart’s taking off again,” the paramedic said. “Maybe I’d better give him a stronger sedative.”

“Mom!” I whispered.

“Yes, honey.”

“It was a trap. Turn off… the computer…”

My mom sprang away from the bed, and quickly returned. “The computer’s off, Greg. Now, lie still.” She must have turned to the paramedic. “Is he going to be OK?”

“If I can just get his heart rate to stay down,” the paramedic said, rummaging in a bag.

“Mom!”

“Yes, Greg. You’ve got to calm down.”

I was slipping down into a soft bed of pink cotton candy. “They know… where we are. Call police right now.”

“I’ll call 9-1-1 right now,” Mom said, and sprang away from the bed again.

“Well, what do you know?” the paramedic commented as I slipped into a deep, drugged sleep. “His heart’s calming down.”

When I woke up again, my mom and dad were sitting by my bed, looking down at me. “Here he is,” my dad said softly. “How you doing, Greg-man?”

“How are you feeling, honey?” Mom asked.

“Sore,” I muttered thickly. “What day is it?”

“It’s just afternoon,” Dad said. “What happened?”

I tried to sit up, but decided it was a really bad idea. “Are the cops here?”

Mom smiled grimly. “Yes, they’re here. You said something about a trap?”

I sighed and closed my eyes as I remembered. “Yeah. They figured out what I was doing, and must have gone in to the teleconference system to look for Grampa’s bug. They must have found it.”

“How would they figure out what you were doing?” Dad asked.

“I made a mistake,” I muttered. “I think it was that I gave the same images and the same nightmares to all of them. They must have compared notes sometime when they were meeting in person. Then they had their own software people work up the trap. Am I gonna be OK?”

“The paramedics say you’ll be fine,” Dad said. “They say you got quite a shock. They said it’s lucky you’re so young and resilient. If you’d been even twenty years older, this would have killed you.”

“Oh, wow. Wow.”

“The police are waiting to see if you want to make a statement,” Mom said.

“Yeah,” I said. “They were all in on it. All four approved Grampa’s murder. Gunderson oversaw the programming, and switched the disk.”

Mom got up and poked her head out the door. “Officer! Could you come here, please?”

I talked for an hour. When I finished, the office said, “I’ll take the evidence with me, and we’ll start making arrests.”

We watched him drive off, and then my dad went to the phone.

“What are you doing?” Mom asked.

“If they’re making arrests tonight,” my dad said, “I thought it would be nice if the news cameras were there to record the events.”

Mom smiled at the thought. Then she said, “Why should we watch it on TV? Why don’t we show up in person?”

Dad laughed. “Good idea. I’ll just make sure the rest of the country sees it on TV.”

I hadn’t seen them laugh together in a long time.

“Won’t they be done by the time we get there?” I asked. “The cop said they were going to start making arrests.”

“Nah,” Dad said. “He may have said that, but they’ll need more time than that. They have to review the evidence, and get an arrest warrant signed. I think we’ve got time.”

Hawkey’s office was in the Advanced GameTek building. We drove there, and went to the executive floor to wait for the cops and reporters.

Mom brought her camera.

We sat in a waiting area on the executive floor, with mom instructing us to look inconspicuous. “I want to see this,” she whispered. “I don’t want security people or policemen sending us away.” I hunched down in my chair, and watched my dad do the same. Nobody seemed to notice us.

Fifteen minutes after we showed up, the elevator opened and disgorged two cops and a camera crew. As they stepped out of the elevator, every eye on the floor turned to look. The hardwood floor echoed under their footsteps as they strode down past the rows of secretaries’ desks toward Hawkey’s office. We walked over there too, hanging back enough to be unworthy of notice. Hawkey’s secretary stood up as everyone approached, her eyes wide and her mouth open. The cops unbuttoned their gun holsters.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“Is Mr. Hawkey in?” the first cop asked. She nodded mutely.

The cops opened the office door and stepped inside. “Mr. David Hawkey?” the first cop asked in a voice loud enough to be heard all over the floor.

An unintelligible answer came from inside.

“We’re police officers,” the first cop continued. “You’re under arrest for the murder of Al Melfred.”

His secretary’s face turned white as a sheet, and she sank into her chair, her mouth forming a perfect “O.”

The cops moved farther into the office. “Step away from the paper shredder,” the second cop ordered. “Hold out your hands.” We heard the unmistakable sound of handcuffs being applied.

My mom stepped into the middle of the hall and called out in a loud voice, “Can I have your attention please? Everyone come out into the hall! It’s extremely urgent!”

Office doors opened by the dozens, and heads appeared just in time to see Hawkey led out of his office in handcuffs. The first cop was saying, “…If you give up the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney…”