Pugaliciousdish

The Rookie

Chapter 5

A few months later…

He wiped the drips of sweat from his forehead, Leon was exhausted after his Thursday night workout. He needed to be in shape if he was going to catch all of the criminals that run around Raccoon City. He had a lot on his mind, exercising was the best way for him to think. He hadn't seen that woman, Ada. Not for a couple months now, he figured she'd skip town or something. As he exited the front doors of the gym, he felt a buzz from his phone. He pulled it up to his face and read the notification. Hey, I'm in town. Want to grab a bite to eat tomorrow morning? Leon looked at the recipient for the sender. "It's from Claire?! What do I send back?" He felt those nervous butterflies in his stomach as usual. Sure. He hit send and immediately regretted it. "I should've said more." He rolled his eyes.

Later that night, after a warm shower and replenishing meal, he laid flat on his bed staring at the ceiling. "I don't have to be in until one which gives me plenty of time to grab breakfast and catch up. I wander why she's back? Do I have deodorant still?" He felt a plague of questions wash over him. He knew he'd be okay. It was just Claire and they were good… "What are me and Claire? Pals? Friends? Romantic Interests? A thing?" He decided not to dwell on it too hard and closed his eyes.

He woke up in his childhood bed. His room was patterned with decorative cars and trains. Leon hopped out of his bed and walked out into the living room. It was empty, his parents were nowhere to be found. There was a knock on the door, nobody went to answer it, so Leon decided to do it himself. He opened the door and outside were two police officers.

"Excuse me son, are you Leon Kennedy?" The darker one asked.

"Yes sir…" He felt guilty answering the man, as if he had done something wrong.

"My name is officer Branagh, and this is officer Redfield." A woman behind him stepped up and held her hand out towards Leon.

"You can call me Claire." She smiled at him.

He was confused, why did she look so familiar? Had he seen her somewhere before? "Is she from that new cop film?" He thought more to himself and then nothing of it. He took her hand and shook it.

"Look son, it's hard to tell you this but there's been an accident. You see your parents were supposedly on their way home and… Well they didn't make it. Were so sorry." The officer took off his hat and put a hand on Leon's shoulder.

Leon covered his face as the tears began to rain down. "Why do I feel like this has happened before? Deja-vu?" He began to feel a little more sub-consciously aware of what was going on. "Wait, this isn't real, I know these two already!"

"Woah son, let's not get too hasty with those kinds of thoughts okay?" The officer tucked his hand onto his hip near his gun holster.

"They wouldn't shoot me, would they?!" Leon backed up. He witnessed Claire go for her gun, in the heat of the moment he reached and shut the door on them. He turned the lock and made a sprint back to him room.

"We're busting in son! It's going to be okay!" Marvin yelled and started hammering at the door.

He panicked, it didn't take them long to bust through the front door. Leon closed his bedroom door and went for the window. He yanked the curtains apart and pulled up on the window. He slid through the gap and was placed into the front yard. There were other officers outside near the street, he slowly walked along the side fence hoping they wouldn't notice when he took off down the sidewalk. But they did, and the dogs did too. Nothing but yelling and panting dogs behind him now, he raced down the neighborhood in his pajamas. "Shit!" At the other end of the street a police car turned the corner and they had him surrounded on both sides. "Maybe I can cross the street!" He hopped off the sidewalk and could hear a roaring siren, almost alarm like. The last thing he saw a was bright pair of headlights that turned into a big white flash.

He gasped for air, letting his body relax. He was back in his apartment, the alarm beside his bed was screaming.

"Shut up." He smashed the off button and laid back down. "It was just a horrible dream."

The rest of the morning he thought about what he was going to say Claire, they'd texted on and off since they'd seen each other last. They both lived busy lives which rarely allowed for social lives. Leon was very careful with planning his off time, even if it was just staying home to watch tv or a movie. It was something that helped him focus and stay on track. He flipped the off switch on his lights and locked the front door. On my way. He hit send and was off.

They met at the same place they first ate at together. Frank's had grown in popularity over the few months it had been open by now, cops were frequent customers and Leon was no exception to that.

"Sounds like you haven't been super busy since I've been gone?"

"Honestly Claire, it hasn't been, almost to a weird degree. I even talked to Marvin about it and he said that it was the slowest couple months the stations had in a while." He glanced out the window. "Enough about me though, what's new with you? You said you were promoted the last time we talked. How's that going?"

"Well, it is nice but it's so much more work than I had hoped. I'm practically doing day and night shifts now. I was only able to get away this week because I'd racked up enough PTO hours."

"Is it really that bad? I mean I occasionally pull an all-nighter to get paperwork done but gosh. I can't imagine how many days in a row you've been pulling." His thigh felt weird and he couldn't figure out why at first. He took a sip of his coffee and felt another buzz. "Oh, my phone." He felt dumb. "One second Claire, I think it's work." He pulled out his phone and sure enough, it was. Leon get to the station asap. It was from Marvin. "Claire I'm so sorry, can we get a raincheck? Maybe later tonight? Dinner on me." He stood up from the table and put his jacket on.

"Oh of course, it's alright. I was thinking about going shopping most of the day anyways. I'll take you up on that dinner though later." She smiled.

"Thanks for understanding Claire." He took out his wallet and left a ten-dollar bill. "I'll catch you around!" He hustled out the diner and to his jeep.

On his way in, there was a car in about every parking spot. Everyone was here today and that meant something was going on. He walked through the front doors and waived to Marcy. "Good morning." She was busy typing and just waived to him. Leon opened the door into the squad room.

"Kennedy, good you're here. There's been another homicide." Marvin waived him over.

"Another sir? What do you mean?"

"Remember a couple months ago, the case with that woman and her boyfriend?"

Of course he did, he hasn't stopped thinking about it since. Something didn't seem right with Ada's story and Leon wasn't a keen believer in coincidences. "Yes sir. It's still cold case."

"Exactly, well it just got a bit warmer. Ben Bertolucci, a reporter, was just found dead in his hotel room at the Apple Inn." He showed Leon the picture of his body.

It was just like how he'd found the other one. His stomach was boiled out from the inside. It was a gnarly sight. "Sir, is Stars taking this one?"

"That's why I called you in rookie, you've been here about six months maybe seven? I don't know, that's not the point. Stars is supposed to be working with us on this case, they said one of us will be joining them. Now you've done some fine work since you've been here." He handed Leon the case folder. "Don't mess it up." He gave him a wink and walked off towards his office.

"Thank you. Sir!" He called after him. Leon looked at the address inside the case file. "Okay, I need to go grab my bag." Leon made his way over to his locker and put on his gear. The same old white long sleeve, blue over-shirt and vest, and black fingerless gloves. He attacked his walkie to his vest and gun holster to his belt. He was going to need to reschedule his dinner date with Claire.

It was only a twenty-minute drive from the station. When he got out, he instantly recognized the place. "Claire's staying here!" He looked around for any sign of her but didn't see anything among the patrol cars and yellow tape. He walked under the yellow caution tape and nodded his head to a fellow officer on lookout. The door that led to the scene of the crime was wide open. Chris was taking pictures of odds and ends around the room.

"Hello Leon, did Marvin send you to work with us?" Chris put the camera down and carefully stepped around the crime scene.

"Yeah he did. Hey, did you know Claire was staying here?" Leon looked around the room.

"Yes, that's why I jumped onto this as fast as I could. But don't tell my boss." He laughed. "She's okay though if that's what your asking. As soon as I got here, I called, and she said she was at the mall. Thank god."

Leon knew she was okay, he'd just seen her about forty minutes ago. But still, good to know she went straight from Frank's to shopping. Stuff like this can really get into people's heads who aren't ready for it. "Okay good, so what do we got so far?" He asked.

"Well the forensics team already took the body away as you can tell, you and I are going to look around the room a bit more and then go ask the manager of the inn some questions. Maybe he saw something. Okay?"

"Got it." He wanted to ask if Ada was somehow involved in this but didn't deem it the right time. He looked at the dresser, the tv was turned off and all the drawers were pushed in. On the bed were stains of what he assumed to have been from Ben's body. "Gross." He walked to the bathroom and inside the mirror was smashed and shards were all over the counter and floor. "Drops of blood inside the sink and on glass shards." He tried flipping on the light switch but there was no bulb in place. "Where's the lightbulb?"

"Don't bother with the lights in there. We found the lightbulb broken and little parts of it were stuffed inside Ben's stomach. There's only one set of finger prints in the entire room. Ben had severe cuts into his stomach when we found him. We think he broke the mirror and took out the lightbulb and used shards from each to try and cut out the chemical in his body. When the lightbulb didn't work, he used the mirror. He wasn't the brightest, I'll tell you that much. His notebook makes him seem like a lunatic." Chris showed him a photo of his writings and drawing. "He was probably days away from blowing his brains out to begin with, he kept a personal feelings log and most of it was about how sad and depressed he was. Wife and daughter left him four years ago and now he's out chasing any leads he can find."

"What was he chasing here?"

"I guess he had a lead on that pharmaceutical company, Umbrella? I'm not sure what it was, he didn't write anything about it besides that he was going to expose them supposedly."

That was the connection. Leon thought about John from the last homicide. "Chris you don't think someone working for Umbrella did this do you? John the victim from the last case was an Umbrella employee. What if Ben got too close to something he wasn't supposed to, and they offed him?" "Look Leon, I know this is your first big case, but this isn't like the movies. Besides we can't exactly go knocking on the front doors with nobody in mind to arrest or evidence to do so." Chris shook his head and continued to survey and takes note on the room. Leon knew something was there, and it probably had something to do with Ada.

After almost two hours Chris and Leon had finished their investigation of the room. Leon knelt down near the nightstand next to the bed, on the top there was a thick layer of dust. "Wait, there's a square outline. That looks like it could be the outline of a phone." He stood up. "Chris, did we pick up a phone from Ben?"

"No why?" Chris walked over next to Leon.

"Look." He pointed to the faint outline of dust. "I think someone came in here before us and took his phone. Maybe he had evidence on his phone."

Chris pulled out his camera and an evidence number card. He set the card next to the outline and took a photo. "Good work Leon, you just might make a good detective someday. I think we've found most of everything we can for right now. Let's go and ask some questions." They both exited the motel room and walked back outside towards the front office of the Inn. Inside there was a man sitting back in his chair typing at a computer. "Excuse me sir, I'm Chris Redfield part of Stars. That's Special tactics and rescue squad. This is police officer Leon Kennedy. We're here about the incident that took place in one of your rooms. The one Ben Bertolucci was staying in."

The man stood up from his chair and walked towards them. Leon appreciated that Chris hadn't said rookie, he became quite annoyed hearing rookie from everyone at the department.

"Oh yes, that is quite unfortunate for him. No doubt going to put a huge halt on my business!" He seemed frustrated no doubt.

Leon began to tune out for some reason what he was saying, something about his home life, then his cat. He wasn't being much help to start.

"A woman came by earlier, I didn't get her name. She said she was supposed to meet someone-."

"Wait! I'm sorry to interrupt." Leon reengaged. "What did she look like? Shoulder-length black hair? Asian American?"

"Oh well, I believe so yes."

Leon looked to Chris. "It has to be Ada, from the last case."

Chris turned around to him. "Leon that description could be tons of woman in the city." He turned back towards the manager. "Can we see the surveillance video tapes from this morning?"

"Sure, right over here." He returned to his computer and pulled up the footage from this morning.

On screen around eight o' five a car parks near the motel. A figure steps out and makes its way toward it. As the figure becomes clearer, it's apparent that it's a woman. She has a trench coat on and a pair of dark sunglasses hiding part of her face. Just as the camera finally gets a decent picture. Leon knows in a heartbeat. "It's Ada Wong."