Disclaimer – I own no legal right to any established Resident Evil trademarks or characters.
Leon opened his drawer, pulled out the glass and hidden bottle of bourbon, and set them on top of his desk.
Then he removed the drawer from the desk completely. He set it next to the bottle and peeled away the tape affixing the notebook to the back of it.
Flipping through the notebook he'd found in Chris' safe again, Leon found an address for a "Lisa Trevor" only a couple pages in.
He pocketed the notebook and stepped out of his office into the reception area.
"I'm taking a trip to the wrong side of the tracks," he said. "If you don't hear from me again you might have to give Lieutenant Luciani a call."
"I thought this was already the wrong side of the tracks," Hunnigan said.
"That just depends on what set of tracks you're talking about," Leon retorted, grabbing his hat and coat off the rack and walking out the door.
Leon remembered the clean, shiny buildings surrounding Spencer's office in downtown Raccoon as he made his way into the slums. He looked over his shoulder. He was being tailed. He knew it. The dark green Cadillac followed his cab all the way from his office until the driver stopped and he got out. As the cabbie drove off, Leon looked over to try to get a good look at the men inside, but they hid their faces behind newspapers.
Leon shrugged it off and began walking through the dilapidated buildings and barren lawns of the slums. Between the houses with their rotting walls and collapsing ceilings were old trailers and animal coops that had been re-purposed as crude shelters. Several barrels scattered in the road between them had contained fires the previous night. A few people in raggedy clothing who had taken advantage of their warmth were still sleeping around them.
A man sitting beside one, face wrapped in old scarves, looked up at Leon with an unsettling cackle.
"Welcome, stranger!" he said, in a raspy, foreign accent. "Got lots of good things on sale. Smokes. Booze. Dirty literature. Guns. What're ya buying?"
Leon ignored the would-be merchant and knocked on the door of the small shack that matched Chris' note.
The door opened slowly, an emaciated middle-aged woman with dark, stringy hair behind it. Her skin was pale, her eyes were wild. As if she hadn't slept in weeks. She took a swig from a bottle that was mostly hidden in a brown paper bag. Leon could smell the cheap whiskey. Not that he was one to judge.
"Jessica Trevor?"
"Yes," she said. "You're here about Lisa?" Leon nodded. "Come in, then."
The whole house looked smaller than Leon's apartment. The wallpaper was faded and peeling. Buckets were filled with rain water from the massive holes in the ceiling. Dirty dishes had spread beyond the sink, then the kitchen, then into the living room. A meager stack of tin cans of various food products sat in the corner of the kitchen counter.
"Any news?" Jessica Trevor asked. "I already told the other policemen everything."
Leon cleared his throat.
"I'm not a cop," he said. "I'm a private detective."
"I can't afford to pay you," Jessica said quickly. "I don't have anything. Lisa's it. She's all I got. George threw me to the side when I started to show. Said it was someone else's, even though I'd never so much as looked at another man. Had to save appearances."
"I don't want any money," Leon said gently. "I'd just like to ask you a few questions, if that's all right?"
Jessica nodded.
"How long has Lisa been missing?"
"More than three weeks now," Jessica said, taking another drink from the bottle. "She said she was going to church on Sunday morning. By suppertime, she still hadn't come back. I waited up the whole night for her. Called the police the next day. I wasn't sure they'd even care enough to send someone over. We never see police around here, unless they feel like roughing us up for kicks."
Leon nodded, scribbling down what she was saying in a notebook of his own.
"Two detectives showed up," Jessica said. "One looked wild, like some kind of big animal. He kept saying I was wasting their time, that she was just a teenage girl off somewhere having fun and that she'd come back on her own. The other one was big, too, but handsome. He asked all kinds of questions."
"Chris?" Leon said. "Detective Redfield?"
"Yeah," Jessica said. "I think that was his name."
She took a square of paper out of the pocket of her shawl, unfolded it and smoothed it out on the cluttered table, and then showed it to Leon. A photograph of a sad looking girl, no more than fifteen or sixteen.
"She has her mother's face, don't you think?" Jessica said. "Nothing like her father. Her father was an architect. Thought very highly of himself. Thought he was going to be the next Frank Lloyd Wright. I never thought much of his designs myself, but he was handsome and he had money. When I was a younger woman that seemed to mean something. George was respectable. And I was considered respectable, too, until he cast me off. No one around here has any respect for an unwed mother trying to raise a daughter on her own. All of a sudden everyone thought I was the whore of Babylon."
Leon handed the photo back.
"She has her mother's face," he said.
"The handsome one, Chris, you called him?" Jessica said. "He promised me he'd do whatever it took to find Lisa. He promised me. I haven't heard anything since."
She tried to take another swig from her bottle, then turned it upside down. Not so much as a drop remained.
Leon closed his notebook and stuck it in his pocket with Chris'. Then he reached for his hip flask and handed it to Jessica, who gratefully took a drink from it.
"I'm not a cop," Leon reminded her. "So you can say no. But would you mind if I had a look in Lisa's room?"
Jessica pointed to a doorway, still holding Leon's flask to her lips. The door was long gone, leaving just hinges. The windowsill was lined with dolls that appeared to have been made from hand out of discarded old cloths and rags. There was barely enough room for both the bed and the small wooden chest that contained all of Lisa's belongings that weren't hanging in the tiny hallowed out section of wall she had for a closet.
Leon gingerly dug through the clothes and random sentimental objects in the chest. Between a pair of tattered sun dresses, he found a cheap necklace, adorned with wooden beads and what almost resembled a cross. Except instead of a bar, jagged pieces crossed near the top, resembling an insect's wings.
Leon looked up and noticed a similar wooden shape on the wall above the bed.
"Are you a religious woman?" he asked.
Jessica shook her head.
"I stopped believing in God a long time ago," she said. "Lisa's friends dragged her along to some church a little while back. After that, she kept going. Kept trying to drag me there with her, too. I told her it was well and good if it brought her some peace, but the only religion I need is right here."
She took another swig from Leon's flask and then handed it back to him, significantly lighter than when he'd given it to her.
"Do you know the name of the church?"
"She was talking so excited about so much nonsense I barely caught a word of it," Jessica said. "She kept saying something about 'the light.'"
Leon moved towards the front door.
"Thank you for your time."
"Are you going to find my daughter?" Jessica asked Leon as he stepped outside.
Her eyes had a far-away expression, as if her soul had escaped the sad prison of her body and fled a safe distance away.
"I'm going to try," Leon said.
Jessica cleared her throat and spat through the door.
"I heard that before," she muttered.
As Jessica shut the door behind him, Leon spotted the nearest payphone from her porch. He started walking in that direction to call another cab when something he saw made him freeze.
Near one of the extinguished fire barrels, a broad-shouldered figure was crouched down beside the groggy vagrants, handing them pieces of paper he was carrying a stack of while they were still horizontal on the ground.
Leon swore he knew the man's shape, as strange as it was to see him in civilian clothing.
He was looking at a ghost. A phantom figure from a former life.
The man disappeared through the narrow space between two shelters on the other side of the street. When Leon squeezed through, he was several houses down, talking to someone at their back window, passing one of the flyers through it.
Leon waited a moment after he weaved through the space between homes again, then walked where he'd seen the other man walk. But when he looked around, there was no sign of him.
Leon shrugged and started walking back in the direction he'd come from. That's when he saw another familiar face, with bloodshot eyes sunken into pale skin.
"I been trying to talk with you since last night," Ricardo Irving said. "Why are you so hard to get a hold of?"
"I don't think there's anything for us to talk about," Leon said.
"The boss says otherwise."
"You can tell the Don if I was willing to get in bed with the Gionne family, I'd never have left the force in the first place."
Irving and his goon were moving closer to Leon, who had his back to the rickety homes. Irving lifted the corner of his pinstripe jacket so Leon could see the .40 revolver tucked down the front of his slacks.
"That's a real big gun for a man with such a small brain."
Irving's hand went to the handle of the revolver.
"Is something wrong here?" another voice said.
It was low and rumbling like thunder. The broad-shouldered figure emerged from between the homes behind Leon.
He walked close enough to Irving that the hood had to look up to see the other man's face. He was significantly taller than Leon or either of the two mobsters, and his muscular limbs looked like tree trunks next to spindly Irving. Steely, narrow eyes in a chiseled but heavily scarred face stared down the other men, calmly and unblinking.
Leon noticed Irving swallow a lump in his throat.
"We were just shooting the breeze," he said meekly.
The steely eyes turned to Leon.
"Enjoying the conversation?"
"Can't say that I was," Leon replied.
"Then the conversation's over," the man said firmly.
Irving shook his head and he and his goon walked away.
"Can't run from us forever," he called back.
Leon turned to his rescuer.
"Major Krauser."
"Private Kennedy," Krauser replied.
"I coulda taken 'em," Leon said.
"Sure, soldier."
Leon looked up into Krauser's impenetrable eyes.
"It's been a while," he said.
"Another lifetime," Krauser agreed. "Come on. Let my buy you a coffee."
Krauser's old jalopy wasn't as nice as Irving's vintage green Caddy. Certainly not as nice as the shiny new Rolls that Carlos drove for Oswell Spencer. But it got them back to downtown Raccoon. They were soon sitting at the counter of Jack's Diner. The waitress was a slender, bubbly blonde with cobalt eyes named Cindy, according to the name badge pinned to her gray apron. When she finished pouring the coffee, she softly ran her hand along Krauser's broad shoulder.
"You boys need anything else?" she asked, showing off pearly white teeth with her smile. "Cream? Sugar? Or are you both just sweet enough already?"
Krauser scowled and shrugged so that her hand fell off his shoulder.
"It's fine as is."
"Okay," Cindy said softly, and then walked down to the next table without taking her eyes off Krauser.
Leon opened his flask and poured a splash into his coffee, then offered the last few drops to Krauser.
Krauser pushed it away.
"My body's a temple," he said, taking a sip of the still steaming coffee. "A temple of the Light."
"So, no booze, then?" Leon said, returning the flask to his pocket.
"Not anymore," Krauser answered. "I don't drink. I don't do drugs. I don't fornicate."
There was extra venom in the last word as Krauser glared at their waitress, who still looked perfectly chipper taking down another patron's order.
Leon took his spoon and stirred the whiskey into the coffee as he waited for it to cool.
"I heard a rumor that you never made it back from the war," he said.
Krauser chuckled. A dry chuckle devoid of any real humor.
"In a way, I guess that's true," he said. "I'm not the same man I was then. But you must know what's that like. The last time I saw you, you were just a naïve kid. A reckless idealist. But you're different now. I can already tell. You're tougher. More closed-off."
"Perhaps," Leon said, finally taking a sip of the hot coffee.
"It wasn't so bad when I first came back," Krauser said. "Strangers were buying my drinks. Calling me a hero. But then I began to realize the world I came back to was different than the one I had left. I spent years over seas, fighting the greatest evil the world has ever known. I knew nothing but death. I witnessed it. I caused it. But while I was off fighting for my country, the whole country kept changing without me."
Krauser stared into his mug of coffee. His mood was as dark and as bitter as it was.
"I can't recognize the culture anymore, Leon," he said. "Everything's changed. The music. The pictures. I can't understand the things the kids are saying or doing anymore. After all I did, I'm just an old man who spent his entire youth fighting. People look at me funny. They don't like the sound of my name. They don't like the look of my scars. No one gives a damn how I got them."
Leon stayed silent as Krauser's grip tightened on the handle of the mug and he took another drink.
"I thought about drinking myself to death," Krauser said. "I thought about . . . worse than that. But then . . . my salvation."
As Krauser lowered his mug back to the counter, a smile finally seemed to cross his face.
"I was rescued from the depths of Hell," he said. "I was born again. With a new, glorious purpose. And I'd like to share my salvation with you."
He reached for his stack of flyers and peeled one off to hand to Leon.
"I don't know, Major," Leon said. "God and I haven't really been on speaking terms since I nearly died on that battlefield. I'm worried if I set foot in a church I'll turn into a pillar of salt or something."
"Please," Krauser said firmly. "Just come with me tomorrow. Do it for me. Let me show you my new purpose."
Leon took a look at Krauser's flyer. First Church of the Illuminated, holding a tent revival at noon on July 29th.
There was a symbol on the paper. A cross between a crucifix and an insect. The symbol Leon had seen twice in Lisa Trevor's bedroom less than an hour ago.
He didn't even have to be a good detective to realize that coincidence was worth checking out.
"I suppose I could use a little religion in my life," Leon said. "I might attend a sermon or two."
Cindy leaned forward so her chest rubbed against Krauser's arm as she put the check down between the two men.
"Did I hear you say something about the war?" she asked. "You know, I love soldiers. And older men. If you ever wanna drop by here again . . ."
Krauser shoved her away.
"Don't tempt me, harlot!"
He slammed his cash on the counter, then got off his stool and marched to the door. Leon turned to face him.
"Major," he called.
The other man turned at the door and looked back at him.
Leon wasn't even sure what had compelled him to ask, but the words came out anyway.
"When was the last time you saw Chris Redfield?"
Krauser's steely eyes moved from Leon down to his own boots.
"Sometimes it's best for the past to stay in the past, soldier."
And then he left the diner, slamming the door behind him.
Leon turned his attention to Cindy, who was no longer smiling and was now lightly trembling.
"Sorry about my friend, bright eyes," he said, adding a couple more bills to the pile Krauser had left. "He wasn't always like that. You can go ahead and keep the change."
