Disclaimer: I don't own legal rights to any of the copyrighted Resident Evil stuff in this story.
Leon opened his eyes to find himself in a cheap apartment, but not his own.
"Oh, good. You're finally awake. You've been out for at least the last couple hours."
The woman's voice, soft and soothing, immediately undid the brief surge of panic he felt. He turned his head and saw a woman in gray and green pajamas. She was short and skinny. Not much more than five feet tall. Young. His age or a few years younger. She knelt down beside him and applied a cold, wet washcloth to his forehead.
She had eyes like smooth brown pebbles beneath short, copper colored curls. There was no way Leon could see her as a threat. Even if she was, she would have already killed him in his sleep if she wanted to. Unless he hadn't really woken up…
"I get it," Leon said. "I'm dead. And you're an angel."
The woman shook her head.
"I'm no angel."
"Well, you look like an angel."
She shook her head again and chuckled lightly.
"I bet you say that to all the girls."
"No," Leon insisted. "I just think that about all the girls. I'm usually much better at keeping it to myself, I promise."
The woman laughed again.
"A few bad blows to the head can have that effect," she said.
Leon was stretched across a couch in just his slacks. His socks and shoes were on the floor below him. Undershirt, dress shirt, vest, and necktie were slung over the back of the couch above him. His hat was on the side table, right next to the shoulder holster with Matilda still tucked away in it.
The woman's eyes went to the gun at the same time his did.
"Are you a gangster?" she asked, brown pebbles shining in the middle of her wide eyes.
"You thought I was dangerous and you brought me back here anyway?"
"I saw you sprawled out in the garbage in an alley. You looked hurt. What was I supposed to do? Just leave you there?"
"Yeah. That's what most would do when they see what looks to be a passed out wino dead to the world in a Raccoon City alley."
The woman untwisted the cap of a bottle bearing the label of the Spencer, Marcus, Ashford & Ashford Company. A strong alcohol scent stung Leon's nostrils as the woman took a dry white rag and poured some of the chemical on it.
"Then I'm not most," she said, closing the bottle and setting it down. "In this city, that would practically be giving you a death sentence."
"Why didn't you just take me to a hospital?"
"Frankly," the woman said, pausing to look him directly in the eyes. "You didn't look like you could afford it."
Leon sighed and chuckled himself.
"Touche'."
The woman dabbing his forehead with the alcohol-drenched rag. Leon winced and cried in pain when she touched an especially deep cut that had either come from Irons' shoe or the interrogation room floor.
"Don't tell me you're one of those tough guys who can take a hit but not somebody cleaning it up after."
"For what it's worth, I didn't take the hit well, either."
"My name's Rebecca." She continued dabbing his wounds. "Rebecca Chambers. I'm a nurse."
"My name's Leon. Leon Kennedy. And I'm not a gangster. I'm a private eye."
"Oh," Rebecca said, eyes wider than ever. "I didn't think I'd ever meet a private eye. I didn't think many existed outside of the stories in pulp magazines."
"It's really nothing like the pulps. Trust me. Most of my time is spent spying on runaway teenagers or adulterous spouses, not looking for Maltese falcons."
Rebecca turned her attention to the cuts and bruises on Leon's torso.
"Those scars down your side," she said. "From a case?"
Leon shook his head.
"From the army," he said. "Four years ago. I was younger and dumber and wanted to die a hero. Some shrapnel almost granted my wish. Got me an honorable discharge and a couple of medals I've got in some drawer somewhere."
"A private eye and a war hero?"
"I'm no hero, angel."
"What happened to you tonight, anyway?"
Every part of Leon from the waist up felt tender and sore.
"I fell on my way out of the police station," he said.
Rebecca nodded with a serious expression, familiar with the R.P.D.'s reputation.
"Who's Ada?"
"Huh?"
"Who's Ada? You kept saying her name in your sleep."
"Are you always this nosy?"
"Only when it comes to mysterious men I find lying in alleys and take back to my apartment."
Leon winced as Rebecca treated another deep cut.
"Ada's just a woman I know," he said.
"Does she look like an angel too?"
"No," Leon said. "If anything, she's a she-devil."
Rebecca opened her mouth wide to ask her next question, but she was interrupted by an aggressive knock on her door.
"Do you usually have this much company in the wee small hours of the morning?" Leon asked.
The knock came again. Rebecca went to the door, turned the lock, opened it as much as the chain would allow, and then quickly slammed it shut and locked it again.
The knocking continued.
"Who is it?" Leon asked.
"A couple of scary looking men in suits," Rebecca said. "One of them looks like an albino."
"Irving," Leon said.
"Friend of yours?"
"He's a gangster."
Rebecca narrowed her wide eyes at him.
"I thought you said your life was nothing like the pulps."
"I'm having the most interesting day of my life," Leon said. He sat up and got dressed as quickly as he could. "I need to get out of here. I don't know how Irving and his friend found me, but you need to convince them that I was unconscious when I came here and that you were asleep when I left."
"The first part will be easy because it's the truth," Rebecca said. "But I think I can manage the second."
Every part of Leon hurt opening Rebecca's window and squeezing his battered and bruised body through, but he was able to make it out on to the fire escape.
"Good bye, Nurse Rebecca."
He winked and blew her a kiss before closing the window and climbing down the fire escape as Rebecca went back to talk to Irving at her apartment door.
He hurt everywhere and was barely conscious, but there was more Leon needed to do before he could call it a night. He retrieved his Harley-Davidson S-125 and rode it to the isolated house where he'd met Dr. John Clemens earlier that day. He stopped further away than he'd had the cabbie drop him and hid his bike in some bushes.
The hike was different by moonlight. He could barely see six feet from his face. Wind rattled the tree branches. His mind went to Lieutenant Parker Luciani talking about hunting for a cannibal killer. He felt like he could sense someone behind every tree, eyeing him up as a tasty morsel. He shuddered and told himself it was because of the chill in the night air.
There were no police cars around the house. No sign of anyone else, either, though someone may have hidden their vehicles the same way he had. He didn't dare turn on his flashlight until he was at the front door. It was already open.
Leon tiptoed inside. The house was dark and silent.
Everything had been so neat and tidy here in the daylight. Now it looked like a storm had blown through. Furniture was overturned. Items were strewn across the floor.
The library was filled with hefty tomes, all scientific in nature. The wall was covered in framed certificates, surrounding a photo of Clemens standing in front of men in lab coats, shaking hands with a bald, hawk-nosed old man in a wheelchair.
The house was lonelier than Chris' apartment. No one in the photographs looked like friends or family. Just Clemens himself and occasionally a few colleagues.
Leon made his way up the stairs, taking each step slowly to make them creak as quietly as possible. He froze when he heard the tip-tap of heels on hardwood coming from just up ahead, followed by the slow squeal of a door creaking open. He turned off his flashlight, drew his pistol and began to tread lightly in the direction of the sounds.
From a bedroom doorway, he saw a woman's familiar figure from the back, silhouetted in moonlight.
"We've got to stop meeting like this, Miss Redfield," he said softly, stepping into the room behind her.
The woman turned around slowly to face him, arms raised.
"Leon?" Claire said.
"Notice how I'm lowering my gun," Leon said, aiming his pistol at the floor as he spoke. "This is the second time we've met in someone's freshly ransacked abode. I suppose it was like this when you got here this time, too?"
"As a matter of fact, it was," Claire said, lowering one hand to her hip. "You look like hell. What are you – ?"
She froze. Leon looked over his shoulder to see a flashlight beam projected on the wall on the other side of the hallway behind him.
Footsteps were thudding closer. Claire and Leon desperately scanned the room.
Leon quickly pushed Claire towards the bedroom closet, already partially opened. It made a loud sound when he quickly forced it the rest of the way, but there was nothing he could do about that now. He pulled Claire in with him, shutting the door as softly as he could with them inside. Their bodies pressed into each other's in the dark. The sweet, clean fragrance of the soap Claire used filled Leon's nostrils. He hoped the scent of alley trash wasn't lingering on him.
"Where are you going?" a man's voice, heavily muffled, said.
"I thought I heard something back here," another man's voice, equally garbled, responded.
Heavy footsteps approached the closet. Leon closed his eyes as the flashlight's beam came through the grate of the closet door.
"We already turned this room upside down," one of the muffled voices said.
"We already turned all these rooms upside down," the other replied.
The sound of something thumping against glass came from nearby.
Leon slowly opened his eyes. The men were now aiming their flashlights away from the closet, at the bedroom window. Leon tried to get a good look at them through the grate. Their faces were obscured by the tan color and elongated shape of G.I. gas masks. They were both tall and broad in build, but one looked like he had a few inches and pounds of muscles on the other. They wore nondescript dark jackets and hats.
The thumping on the glass continued.
"Look at it," the taller one said. "It's just a bird."
Then the window exploded. Glass tinkled to the floor and an unusually large crow flew in, fluttering its wings in the two men's faces and cawing loudly. As the shorter man screamed, the taller man struck the bird hard with a gun he was carrying, then stomped repeatedly with a heavy boot until the bird noises stopped completely.
"We're wasting time here," the tall one said. "We already looked everywhere. It's gone."
"Are we sure he had it?" the shorter man asked.
"We're sure. He had it. But he must have given it to someone else."
"Man in charge isn't gonna be happy we didn't find it."
"It's going to turn up. Only a matter of time before we find out who has it. Come on."
Claire and Leon listened carefully as the footsteps moved out of the room, down the hall, and then down the creaky stairs. They stayed there, pressed together in the dark, until several minutes after they heard the front door slam. Then Leon opened the door and they tumbled out of their hiding spot.
The moonlight through the broken window fell like a spotlight on the carcass of the hideously large black bird.
"What are you doing here?" Leon asked.
"I was just going to ask you the same thing," Claire said.
"I get paid to snoop. What's your excuse?"
Claire reached into her trouser pockets and pulled out a sheet of paper. It had been rubbed down with a pencil lead, revealing dents that spelled Clemens' name and address. The kind of cheap trick used in dime store detective novels.
"Found this in Chris' apartment."
"Hate to break it to you," Leon said, "but Clemens is a dead end, in the worst possible way."
"What do you mean?"
"Someone popped his head like a pea," Leon said. "I saw the whole thing. Eight feet tall and three hundred pounds."
Claire leaned back with her arms folded and scowled at him.
"Still with the dumb wisecracks?"
"Everyone's been looking at me like that all night," Leon said. "To hell with you if you won't believe me. I've taken my lumps for the night. First from the big bruiser who popped Clemens. Then from some old friends at the R.P.D. who aren't happy about me poking around."
"So are you going to quit poking?"
"Not on your life. I've hit a nerve, so now I'm just going to poke harder out of spite. Besides, Chris was kind of a friend to me during a time when I really needed it."
He made his way out the door and to the stairs.
"Don't you want to help me look for whatever it is those two men couldn't find?"
"You knock yourself out," Leon said. "My head feels like it's splitting in two and I can barely keep my eyes open. I need to take a shower and then sleep like a much richer man would."
He could feel her eyes on his back as he descended the stairs, no longer caring how loudly they creaked. At the bottom, he turned and looked up at her.
"Try not to get eaten by cannibals on your way home," he told her.
Claire stood there with a confused and bewildered expression as Leon walked out the front door.