I said softly, “If you by chance happen to find Mrs. Harlow and go near her – and believe me, I’ll know if you do – I will look you up and pay you a visit, and if you’ve hurt her in any way I will shoot you. And, aside from that, if I ever see you again I will shoot you. And, I won’t be aiming for your foot.”
He looked up at me with glassy eyes and jerked his head in a nod. A wet stain began spreading on the front of his dirty khaki pants. I was a little surprised. I didn’t think I was that frightening. Maybe he had to go and couldn’t hold it.
I smiled. “Thank you for your business, Mr. Harlow.” I always thanked my clients.
I left and the first place I headed was to the local sheriffs’ office. I’d done business with them before so they knew me. I stepped through the door and Ken, the deputy at the desk, looked up at me. His eyes widened and he jumped up and came around the desk.
“Tennessee! What in hell happened to you? Hey Roy! Come out here!” He stared at my swollen nose. “Lemme go gitcha some ice. Be right back.”
He hurried down a short hall as the sheriff, Roy Winston, came from his office to see what was going on.
Ken got back while I was explaining the circumstances to Roy. “Put this on your nose. Shoulda had something on there right away but it still might help,” he said handing me an icepack and a towel.
“Thanks, Ken.” I wrapped the towel around the pack and gingerly held it to my nose.
Roy eyeballed my nose. “You need to go get that looked at, Tenn,” he said, frowning “That looks like it might be broken.”
I nodded. “Yes, I know, Roy, but there’s something else I have to do first. The icepack ought to hold it for a while.”
Once upon a time, I would’ve been required to hang around for an investigation, and likely detained or charged with something, but in today’s world, that didn’t happen much anymore. The fact that the sheriff knew me helped, too.
He patted my shoulder and walked with me to the door. “Well, okay, but you be careful and don’t worry about none of this. I’ll send somebody around to check on this guy – Abe Harlow did you say? Never heard of ‘im. I didn’t even know anybody was still staying out there. You go on, we’ll handle it.”
I handed him Harlow’s keys, thanked him, waved at Ken who’d gone back to his desk, and left to pay a visit to Mrs. Harlow. She hadn’t left with another man, she was staying with a family. Harlow lied about that, too.
Mrs. Harlow was upset about my nose and insisted on giving me more ice to hold on it and then she made me some tea. She fluttered around trying to feed me and apologizing for what her asshole of a husband did but I assured her that she didn’t have anything for which to apologize, as it wasn’t her fault. Had I been more on guard, he would never have tagged me.
The money from Harlow turned out to be a lot more than he owed, possibly all he had though I suppose he could’ve had more stashed somewhere. I took the remainder of my fee and left the considerable excess with Mrs. Harlow.
Still, simply because her asswipe of a husband pissed his pants didn’t mean he wouldn’t go looking for his wife once he got his jaw and his foot fixed up – and changed his pants. I didn’t think he would find her but, since it was a possibility, I left five of the rifles and two of the handguns with her and her friends. I told her she should shoot him if she ever saw him coming. I wasn’t sure she’d be able to but thought maybe one of her friends could. By then I’d gotten phone service so I gave her my number and told her if he showed up to let me know and I’d take care of it. She thanked me profusely and gave me a hug before I left. Nice lady. Reminded me of my mother.
I would’ve left all of the firearms because I had enough guns, and didn’t need any more at the time, but I needed extra cash so, except for the 9mm, which I kept, the rest I sold and used some of the money to pay a doctor to look at my nose. Unfortunately, it was several days before I went and he said I should’ve come sooner, so because of that, my nose would always have a crook in it. It wasn’t bad. The doctor said a little plastic surgery would fix it right up if I wanted to go that route. That type of surgery was getting to be iffy, and the break caused no impairment to my breathing so I never bothered. Besides, I had better things to do with my money.
Roy Winston called later. Seemed Abe Harlow had another reason for hiding out in that isolated area and I’d accidentally helped catch a fugitive.
His deputies went out to the site, found Harlow, and took him to a hospital where he was treated and released, and then they arrested and held him for extradition to York, South Carolina because the check they ran on him came up with an assault warrant. Not on his wife but on a different female. The man was a cowardly asshole who undoubtedly got his jollies terrorizing and beating women.
Since I didn’t especially enjoy fighting or getting my nose broken – or shooting someone – I got careful of how I told my clients that the husband/wife/lover or whoever they’d sent me to find didn’t want to come back. That incident taught me to always take a couple of the guys I sometimes hired for legwork, to accompany me if a client wanted to meet in an isolated area.
I never had another such incident. As for Harlow, unfortunately, I did see his ugly ass again but that was much later.
Chapter Fourteen
TWO YEARS AFTER THE DAY THE WORLD changed forever, folk had begun to relax and quit trying to hide if a sudden heavy fog came up, though, if that shit ever happened again I believe everyone knew there was no way to hide from it. But, you couldn’t blame anyone for being paranoid.
On the other hand, the technologies that folk hoped would return hadn’t done so, either. In fact, some things that functioned right after the Event, no longer did or if so, not in the way in which they had before. Folk chalked this up as being part of the aftereffects, though the physicists were still trying to figure it out without much luck. There were also a number of odd leftovers from that day.
One such leftover was in the form of patches of weird growths that appeared not long after the Event – trees, shrubbery, and undergrowth – forming unpleasant blighted sites. It was unknown where they came from or why they appeared in any particular place, but studying them was impossible. For instance, there were five blighted sites in the city, and early on, after a couple of complaints, the authorities sent a crew into one to begin clearing it. They never came out. Whoever was in charge of such things was smart enough not to send anybody in to look for the lost crew.
Someone got the brilliant idea to only go to the edge and begin clearing from the outside. This didn’t work because when the crew showed back up the next day to continue, they found that what they cut down the day before lay moldering on the ground and the vegetation had regrown. Trying to snip off a few pieces of greenery for study didn’t work either, as the cuttings blackened and disintegrated leaving nothing to be tested.
Several places from around the world reported having removed a patch in its entirety only to find that it reappeared overnight. Most such patches weren’t large and there wasn’t that many of them. Generally, the places that had them only had one or two but Charlotte with its five, had more than anywhere else. They didn’t obstruct anything important so avoiding them wasn’t difficult. It was merely something else to which everyone had to adjust. The city posted warning signs.
Trade and the transportation of goods went into a tailspin at first but after the initial chaos, it resumed – with those companies and countries that were still more or less functional. Due to the new limits of the internet, many online businesses eventually shut down.