The Paranoid Thief

The Paranoid Thief

Danny Estes

Word Branch Publishing

Marble,
NC USA

2014

This novel is
dedicated to Patricia O’Reilly.

For without whose
love, this book would never have been finished.

Randolph McCann crawled away from the
smoldering wreckage of the cross-wired hover bike he’d stolen and shook his
dizzy head. With considerable effort, he stood and tried to discern the glow of
the stars above, over those swimming around in his eyes. The ride over the tree
tops had been one wild scare, with peaks and eddies.
Definitely more excitement than I needed,
he thought to himself,
then cleared his head of the obvious.

While his mind and body partly refused to
talk to one another, both still living the past ten minutes, Randolph caught a
momentary image of a tree amongst the hybrid bushes of
Willing’s
city park and stumbled over to sit his butt down before gravity took over.

I
made a tactical error tonight
, Randolph needlessly told himself,
one which could have been detrimental to my
well-being, if not to my freedom
. With his head laid back against the tree,
Randolph tried to focus on the pile of twisted aluminum which once resembled
the latest achievement in aerodynamics.
Perhaps
it’s time for plan D
, he mused as he gathered his wits.
After all, the first three are history now,
which means the job is history.
Very problematic.

Randolph looked to one hand, which had
balled up into a fist on its own. Mr. Hilden had trapped him into this doomed
caper and left very little doubt as to what the results of a failure would
bring about. While these thoughts presented themselves vividly before his
mind’s eye, Randolph’s body begin to shake.
A reasonable reaction.
The shakes
were not due to Mr. Hilden’s threats, but rather from Randolph’s heroic efforts
to avoid being intertwined in the twisted metal some feet away.

Uncertain how long the shakes would last,
Randolph wrapped his arms about his abused self, which at present was encased
in a very illegal special-ops night suit he’d acquired for the job.
A rather expensive acquisition,
he
reflected with regret,
but as I had no
time…
Randolph laid his head back once more and swallowed. He closed his
eyes and with some effort reconnected his scrambled thoughts with reality.
Yep, time to cut the umbilical cord and find
someplace to lay low
, he told himself, “and I best get a move on.” He spoke
the last aloud as if that would aid in his recovery. With more effort than he
would admit, Randolph opened his eyes and used the tree for support in gaining
his full height of five feet and nine inches.
Not a real impressive height
, his mind commented to redirect his
thoughts from several painful abrasions,
but
one which allows more anonymity, which is useful for blending into crowds.

Once more on his feet, Randolph used an
unsteady hand to pull off the black hood of the suit to better see; for the
night vision had been rendered inoperable. As the hot, skin-tight material
reluctantly came away from his head, the cool air of mid November rushed over
his damp, clean-shaven face, and the scalp covered in closely-cropped hair
which Randolph judged neither attractive nor repulsive.

Randolph took in a deep breath of clean,
early morning air and exhaled a sigh of gratitude that he was no longer
dependant on the suit’s chemical air system, an integrated part of the suit’s
stealth system, which he had no need of.
But
then again, one never knows.

He pushed away from the tree and moved a
bit unsteadily in circles until his land lover legs quit wobbling about as if
he were a toddler on his first steps of life’s adventures. “I’ve been far more
than lucky tonight,” he vocalized the blindingly obvious. “With only two weeks
to scope out the security measures of that three story mansion, my efforts to
pull off this job were far more than epic.” Randolph paused in his commentary
and searched out the zipper to the suit.
If
only I could have backed out of the job. If only Mr. Hilden had listened to me.
Now nobody wins,
Randolph argued to no one but himself, while he carefully
stripped out of the outfit on steadier legs.
Now the package I’d been sent in for will go to the corporate
authorities as forewarned and there’s nothing Mr. Hilden can do to stop it.
Randolph’s latest target, the Henderson’s, lived in the city of Willing,
located on the lower tip of what was Arkansas before the inventor of
plastic-steel, Mr.
Luashess
, single-handedly bought
Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, then renamed them as the single state of
Luashess
.
As Mr.
Henderson, an executive officer for the
Badding
firm
and Ms. Henderson, a highly paid lawyer in legal documentation, a pair of very
intelligent individuals, will definitely surmise rightly what tonight’s failed
escapade was all about.

Now that his wobbly legs were responding reasonably
well, Randolph stretched his back muscles to work out any leftover kinks and
said firmly to himself, “To hell with it.” Without any regrets, Randolph wadded
up the lightweight material which had cost over 30,000 credits to acquire and
disposed of the suit onto the heap of smoldering aluminum and fiberglass like
it were nothing more than a pile of old rags.

“I told that blackmailing, pompous city
official I wasn't suited for dirty in-and-out jobs,” Randolph argued aloud to the
hybrid self-maintaining vegetation, while he extracted a saddle bag from the
back of the bike. With contempt for this century’s security lock, deemed
adequate on all business travel bags, he opened and drew out a white and blue
jogging suit and continued to berate Mr. Hilden.
“If that
self inflated ego had only listened.
If he had hired people who do this
type of stuff, if, if, if,” he told the park’s vegetation and miniature
inhabitants in anger, now that they had overcome their fright of his unannounced
arrival.

After a moment more, Randolph forced
himself to stop his unfruitful ranting and took in a deep breath of the earthy
incense around him. As fall covered the land, this meant the aromatic
scents in the air was
not of sweet flowers and new growth,
but rather the heady smells of bark and rotting vegetation. A distinct
difference some people found objectionable. For Randolph, however, this meant
the rebirth of wet weather, a distinct advantage in his chosen profession, as
the migration of water molecules helped to dilute any leftover DNA. And as he
found a hint of moisture on the air, this helped in his bid for composure.
After another breath to reinforce his thoughts of impending rain, Randolph
slowed his flustered mind and reasoned his anger was a combination of fear and
uncertainty. A knowledge Randolph used to reclaim a calmer state of mind.
Well mostly,
he admitted to himself. A
few breaths more and he focused his mind on plan D, outlining its conception in
his head.
First, get back to the workshop,
he began to tic them off.
Second,
eliminate any equipment that could point fingers at my style of operation.
Third, leave the state of
Luashess
by any means
possible. Simple really…perhaps,
he reminded himself. If there was one
virtue Randolph had plenty of, it was his grasp on reality. He knew very well
Mr. Hilden had a band of muscle men watching his every move, a fact which had
not escaped him from the moment Mr. Hilden introduced his right-hand man, Mr.
Stanton. The proverbial brick-wall in human form,
who
walked in Mr. Hilden’s office dressed in a top of the line
Harmanii
business suit.
Geez,
Randolph
remembered
thinking,
the man’s mug alone could stop someone's heart, making his over-large
hands rather redundant.

A sound in the distance caused Randolph to
cock his head. “Sirens,” he told himself and searched the skyline above the
trees for the direction of the city’s air patrol cars.

Whether they were after him or not,
Randolph felt he’d rambled on long enough.
Time to get moving.
With a look
in the other side of the saddle bag, Randolph removed a small round plastic
pouch and discarded the empty bag with the rest of the present evidence to his
attempted crime on the aerial-bike. Randolph rotated his head on his shoulders
in an effort to work out one last kink before he activated the DNA scrambler’s
fifteen second timer he’d built from a simple two-credit watch. He walked away,
tossing the bag of common household chemicals on the pile. After a short walk,
Randolph heard the charge go
poof
,
which meant the small explosive sent out a spray of chemicals that would render
all surrounding DNA unusable for police labs and dogs alike, a fairly
indispensable homemade device for his kind of career.

Uncertain of his current location, Randolph
took a look at his compass watch, which showed him via satellite a small
rendering of the 20 mile radius park. With an idea of where he stood, Randolph
redirected his feet, heading for the jogger’s path which he’d used this past
week to make him appear as a new regular.
Precautions
like this are always necessary to help in any alibi which may be needed if some
unforeseen problem should arise, like now for instance.

Although he was early for his daily run by
an hour and twenty minutes, Randolph couldn’t wait-out the extra time in the
park. Mr. Stanton would awaken shortly, if he hadn’t already, and be on the
road to intercept him at his base of operations. So a variation of his alibi
had to be improvised if he ran into trouble.

When the illuminated jogger’s path became
easier to discern in the darkness, Randolph stopped his jog through the woods
to await a clear gap of early users. This precaution would insure no one saw
him enter by the woods, making him just another runner. But as no one could say
they had seen him in their run, Randolph forced himself to slow a bit, so as to
be seen by others before he continued his run at a normal pace.

As Randolph worked out annoyed muscles,
damaged slightly from his sudden unplanned stop, he allowed a small smile to
touch his lips, knowing his preparations has covered his tracks. But he wasn’t
out of the woods yet,
literally,
he
told himself as he rounded a hill. For up ahead, a little before the exit to
the city’s park was a hastily erected police checkpoint.

Man,
these people are fast!
Randolph thought to himself, but as his run and
outfit would aid the officers very little in discerning his involvement in any
crime, he felt relatively safe.
Besides,
he told himself to bolster his confidence,
check
points are only glorified shows of force, built solely to mollify the mundane
city dwellers and no threat to anyone other than the inexperienced thief.

Randolph allowed these thoughts to trail
off as he drew near the post, never even considering any abrupt change in
course.
Because
something as plainly incriminating as that would have the police chasing you
down in no time.
So jogging up on the station like any innocent
bystander, Randolph pressed his lips firm to look irritated on the
inconvenience to his run. With an eye to normality, he also began a
conversation with a fellow runner who had been ahead of him, playing up on his
part of just another average citizen. As he questioned the man on the reason
for police presence, Randolph paid a token curiosity to the structure’s
video-cameras, multi-directional microphones, and voice commanded search
lights, while inwardly he fidgeted on the lost time as the officers worked
though the early morning crowd.

When Randolph was finally signaled he was
next, he walked up to the decently-built female officer, whose facial structure
was greatly mired by her look of constipation. With a quick eye for even the
smallest detail, Randolph stopped on the hastily painted white line as directed
by an unmistakable large sign on her booth and heard her snap in a no nonsense
voice, “Name?”

“Bill
Lenton
,”
Randolph lied with practiced ease.

“Occupation?” she asked as she swept him
over with an electric detection wand that only beeped on his watch, which she
motioned for him to remove so it may be more thoroughly inspected.

“Sales rep for Pro Tip Produce,” Randolph
said with smoothness, pulling out his wallet to hand her a business card like
any pushy business man might have. The woman took the card and his wallet
simultaneously,
then
read the card, checking both
sides.

“I see,” she said out of boredom to the
routine.
“Where from?”

“Uh...
Lexfunt
,
south of
Portbay
City, by the Great Lakes,” Randolph
added as if out of habit.

“Hmm,” she remarked without interest while
she pulled out all his fake ID cards and other paraphernalia a traveling sales
rep might have. With a non-curious look to each item, she laid each down on her
counter so the video-camera could imprint them on file. Once the wallet was
empty and the video-camera had its time, she picked up his ID card with a
fairly good picture of Randolph’s long face, short stubby nose, average chin
and hair style. “What are you doing so far from home, and specifically why are
you out in the park so early on this particular morning?” She locked her eyes
on his.

A
pro,
Randolph
omitted,
his opinion of her rising;
definitely a pro,
for the woman was
watching his eyes to see which way they rolled up when he told his likely
story. But as he had already run through the reason a few times in his brief
run, Randolph began his fib with no uncertainty. “I’ve been visiting the stores
nearby, demonstrating our product’s differences but today I’ve a big pitch to
give to a larger corporation, so I’m out early for a jog to loosen up before
the meeting.”