The Paranoid Thief (3 page)

Randolph became aware of himself sometime
later, sitting at his desk. He raised his head, feeling as if he’d had one too
many boilermakers and blinked several times. Without any true consciousness of
his actions, he took note that his monitor was on and the computer was actively
running cheaply-designed intrusion software he’d never use. With a mouth
tasting of dry cotton, Randolph smacked his lips and sat slowly up but found he
was unable to manipulate his hands properly to acquire a cup of cold tea left
on the desk. Still unsure as to why this was, and why he heard the office door
slam open, Randolph fought to gather his wits and make sense of the pounding
feet attached to bodies attired in Special Forces equipment. Just able to
swivel his executive chair a bit Randolph looked blurry-eyed on three laser
rifles trained on him before another body passed them by to cast him to the
floor face first. Without hesitation the man strapped his arms and legs
together in record time as if he were a rodeo bull in an old western video.

“Suspect is down and in custody,” was the
unnecessary yell above his prone body.

“Fan out and search the rooms,” someone
else shouted, which added to Randolph’s pounding head. The feet about him moved
away save one set, which moved one foot to apply weight to the center of his
back with the added coldness of a riffle barrel planted to the base of his
neck. A precaution which could damaged his spine or takes his life, which ever
the officer felt appropriate, should he try and resist. But as Randolph
marveled over why he was still alive rather than dead, he gave the armed
officer no reason to put him in a wheelchair or incinerate his head.

“Lieutenant, have a look here,” someone
called from a closet across the room. His vision clearing, Randolph saw the
officer open up a wooden crate he’d never seen before and pull out a strip of
plastic explosive he knew with a certainty should not have been here. Randolph would
never incriminate himself so easily, nor endanger the lives of any local
residents so unnecessarily.

He closed his eyes and moaned in despair.
Mr. Stanton has set me up to take the fall
for something. Now the question remains, how bad is it?
To this realization,
Randolph sighed.
The court system likes
open and shut cases regardless if they are or not. I just hope I get a
competent lawyer who will do more than a look-see into where the equipment came
from.

After an hour on the floor while the
trained men collected five or six items Randolph never acquired for the
Henderson job, the officers gathered around him and applied body restraints.
Four men then strapped him to a pole and hefted it up onto their shoulders to
carry him out; a standard procedure for any dangerous suspects to restrict any
chance of escape while transported through an unsecured area. Next came a short
trip to the city jail still suspended within the vehicle; another precaution
against any conceivable means of harm to the men present in the vehicle’s
cabin. Randolph then was carried out and placed in a holding cell where
processing could begin.

After only a short time, Randolph was
forced into an enclosed booth with half of one side made up of a glass-steel mirror
plate, for observation. He was then instructed none too cordially to strip bare
before restraint rings were applied to wrists and ankles by a robotic arm. Next
came
the unpleasant white room, where the magnetic
rings were activated, a rather painful experience that resulted in his arms and
legs being snapped out like Leonardo
Da
Vinci’s
depiction of the human body. Here three different chemicals sprayed over
Randolph’s body, one to dissolve every strand of body hair, a second to clean
his skin of any objectionable germs and finally a third, to disinfect him of
any stubborn air borne illnesses or chemicals.
 
Next his arms and legs came together as if he were preparing for a high
dive, so a rotating cylinder from the roof could slowly descend to take X-rays
and videos of his outer and inner body structure. This unobtrusive technique by
the aid of computers could now make a complete rendering of his body to produce
his image in any position or outfit to better ID him in any disguise.

After all this humiliation, Randolph
finally sat dressed in a bright red coverall, in a gray cell, five feet by five
feet, three hours after hitting the jail, as yet without a clue to the charges
against him.
But this is normal,
he
reminded his overactive imagination.
Criminals
should already know why they’re here.
However, being set up as a fall guy
by Mr. Stanton, Randolph was one of a small minority uncertain of his actual
crimes in a system built to process criminals in wholesale fashion.

Given five days to sit on his butt and
wonder over the matter, while the charges were tallied and a sentence agreed
upon before the kangaroo-court would convene for the public records, Randolph’s
appointed hour for the public hearing arrived.

With the arrival of grim-faced court
deputies, Randolph’s restraints activated to a touch of a button, bringing his
arms and legs together. Once he was settled on a robotic transport, the group
of them, including two city guards as redundancy measure, saw him to the
elevator platform. This decadent precaution had been established long before
the restraints and robotic transport were incorporated to make certain no
prisoners disappeared before the elevator could lift the defendant up into the
courtroom.

Thus, without incident, Randolph was
brought up into a glass enclosure, designed specifically so only the selected
lawyer could hear the defendant’s boisterous complaints. A procedure put in
place to protect the sensitive ears of judge and witnesses alike, should an
unruly defendant decide to molest those gathered with objectionable profanity.

Once the elevator came to a halt, Randolph
looked around the small oak-panel room which included ten witnesses on a pew, a
middle aged bailiff, an ambitious looking judge, an old prosecutor, and
Randolph’s all-too-young, snot-nosed-just-out-of-night-school lawyer.
It appears Mr. Hilden is taking no chances,
calling in a favor to make my incarceration a certainty.
Randolph looked
skyward, with the knowledge he’d been royally screwed.
The question now of course is how screwed?
And with that thought,
his so-called trial started.

The kid outside his inverted containment
dome sat down and somehow managed to open his briefcase with trembling fingers.
Possibly because this is his first
courtroom appearance,
Randolph surmised.

“Let the video recorders show all court
personal and witnesses are present,” the bailiff called out. “Case number
37645AD, the city of
Willing
in the great state of
Luashess
, for the people. Mr. Prosecutor?” He finished
without emotion before he backed away so a fat, balding, older man could
activate his monitor which displayed on a liquid screen all charges attached to
Randolph’s case file.

The prosecutor, who bore the weight of
over-indulgent eating habits, stood as customary so all could see the anger instilled
in his fat face for the atrocities the defendant committed. “As you can all
see,” he began in a boisterous voice, “the charges against this unrepentant
criminal are substantial. The defendant is accused with fifteen minor and seven
major criminal acts which alone would render a life sentence. But those all
pale before the willful murder and lack of consciousness for the lives of the
whole Henderson family, including their pregnant daughter, five live-in
servants, and the rape and murder of a chanced-upon jogger in the city’s
recreational park only an hour or more after setting up a bomb in the
Henderson’s three story mansion, causing it to collapse and kill all within.”
The prosecutor then stroked his black tie with chubby fingers and a cold smirk
on his lips as the room of people reacted to his brutal inflection of words on
the charges against Randolph. This reasonable reaction of outrage also included
Randolph’s own disbelief of the charges.

“The Henderson family wasn’t even home!”
Randolph screamed to the room but the glass enclosure carried his voice only to
his lawyer’s ear piece, which still lay in its cradle next to the kid’s
briefcase. “They were over...aw damn-it-all.” Randolph exclaimed, as the true
folly of his mistake sank in.
They were
over at Mr. Hilden’s home, per his invitation. Of all the stupidities I could
have ever done. There was never any package to retrieve!
Randolph sagged
against the restraints.
That was why Mr.
Stanton was so smug. The whole thing was a set-up to get my DNA on the grounds
and link me to the bomb, thereby killing off the family and leaving me the sole
fall guy!
But what he couldn’t at first understand was the jogger—why did
they kill an innocent bystander? Then it hit him; the bomb had to be set off
hours later when Mr. Hilden knew the whole family would be home. The death of
the jogger had been the simplest way to get the wheels of corporate justice on
the move. Any murder automatically put a person on the top of the list, rating
a visit from the city’s Special Forces. Once an informant squealed out
Randolph’s location, the specialized group would have mobilized and entered
Randolph’s office minutes after Mr. Stanton left.
A truly professional job,
Randolph grudgingly admitted. He turned
his face to peer at the snot-nosed lawyer whose slack-jawed face gave Randolph
every confidence in the court system. With a look skyward for help, Randolph
already could feel the imaginary needle of death slide into his arm.

“Mr. Hamming, how does your client plead?”
The Judge questioned, his voice colored with loathing to further
imprint
what the kid’s choice of words should render.

“Uh, hmm,” the young man stumbled. He
opened his collar with a finger and then straightened his tie. With a look to
Randolph with fear plainly visible in his eyes, he never even attempted to pick
up the ear piece to communicate with Randolph before he said with a squeaky
voice, “Guilty as charged Your Honor.”

“So entered,” the judge declared and
slammed his gavel down, totally ignoring that Randolph’s lawyer had never
spoken to his client. “Mr. McCann,” the judge began.
“Alias
Bill
Lenton
, John Thornton, and Bob Towner.
This court of law has the pleasure of sentencing you to death. As you have
pleaded guilty, the sentence will be carried out in three days’ time!” With a
final drop of his gavel of justice, the judge called out, “Next case,” while
Randolph, though ranting and raving within his restraints, was lowered out of
the courtroom.

Ceremoniously charged with murder meant top
security measures were applied to the prisoner to make certain he couldn’t
deprive the grief-stricken families the pleasure of watching him die. But in
Randolph’s case, as he had been convicted in the death of a corporate head, the
kangaroo court took extra measures to be certain their prisoner didn’t off
himself before the city could record his death. For executions of his notoriety
were a profitable business
, one guaranteed to bring in
thousands of video sales at twenty credits a pop. This left no opportunity for
Randolph to apply his very useful skills as a professional thief and escape
artist, which left him, in three days’ time, taken to the injection room by the
same robotic transportation unit and redundant guards. Unable to control his
emotional state, however embarrassing it may have been while moved to the
special viewing room, Randolph excitedly implicated Mr. Hilden in the deaths of
the Henderson family and the park jogger. Even so, while he cited over and over
he’d never take a human life, Randolph knew it would only be seen as a
slanderous gesture.

The robotic device of cold steel rolled
without judgment of Randolph’s disgraceful display of self preservation moved
into a sterile room of white and rotated its passenger so that he faced a
closed curtain. This curtain hid the faces of those possibly victimized by his
criminal deeds. And although Randolph knew he had been judged rightly on most
of the minor and major crimes, it wrenched asunder his soul to die for another
man’s crime! Indifferent to how it might look on video, Randolph fought his
restraints, regardless of its futility, and pleaded his innocence at the top of
his lungs unto deaf ears even after a neck ring had been forcibly applied to
help immobilize his head and press his jaw closed.

“Please...” Randolph begged through pressed
lips. “I didn’t do it! I’ve never killed anyone! Please!” He begged on without
any conscious thoughts on how history would view his apparent cowardly cry.
While he continued to strain every muscle to regain his freedom, Randolph saw
through teary eyes the change of staff, which meant the standard deaf medical
attendant now oversaw his demise so no one need-be offended by his last words,
save those who chose to behind the curtain and those who paid out the credits
for the court’s recorded video.

Now with the inconceivable last chance of a
reprieve gone, Randolph let out a stream of obscenities and vows of retribution
while the deaf attendant administered several drops on his lips of a
foul-tasting liquid, which burned like fire once it worked its way onto his
tongue. Several more drops were then added to the first from another dispenser
which cooled Randolph’s tongue but also caused it to swell up in his mouth like
a dried-out sponge, so he could no longer voice any complaints. Once these measures
were taken, the curtain before his eyes was pulled aside. Still whimpering his
innocence, Randolph looked on the witnesses and blinked in disbelief as Mr.
Hilden’s face came into focus among the six present. The sight of Mr. Hilden’s
old face and appropriately disdaining look caused Randolph’s heart to turn
black as night and overflow with his first ever wish to kill a living person.