"Hi there! I'm Mary Jane Watson, an intern with the Daily Bugle."
Mary Jane pushed through the glass door of the restaurant. The smell of cheap bleach and stale coffee hung heavy in the air. One corner of the dining room was entirely cordoned off with yellow caution tape and plastic sheeting, hiding the blackened floorboards. The rest of the joint was carrying on as usual.
Since it wasn't the lunch rush, the owner was leaning against the front counter, wiping down the register. He stopped, his eyes dropping to the press badge clipped to MJ's jacket. His expression instantly soured.
"You're with the paper? The assistant to that reporter with the glasses?"
"Ned Leeds, yes," Mary Jane said, flashing a bright, disarming smile. "I'm helping him organize his case files on the bombing. We just found a few gaps in his notes, so I wanted to swing by and verify a few details."
The owner scrubbed his hand over his balding head, glancing nervously toward the taped-off corner. He leaned over the counter, lowering his voice. "Listen, kid. I don't know what your boss is thinking, but you should drop it. The cops haven't even followed up since the blast. If the uniforms are burying it, you're not going to find anything."
Mary Jane nodded sympathetically, resting her elbows on the counter. "I know, I know. It's an uphill battle. But it's my job. Tell you what—just repeat exactly what you told Mr. Leeds back then. Just give me something I can put on my clipboard so I don't get fired."
The owner let out a heavy sigh, tossing his rag aside. "Fine, fine. It went like this..."
Mary Jane clicked her pen, jotting down shorthand notes as he spoke. She asked pointed questions whenever he paused. Just as the owner had warned, there wasn't a lot of new information. But Mary Jane wasn't discouraged. She was listening for the things Ned Leeds hadn't asked.
The blast radius was impossibly small. It only consumed a single table. It hadn't even shattered the front windows; it merely spider-webbed the glass.
"And there was really no sound?" Mary Jane pressed, looking up from her notepad.
"No boom," the owner confirmed, shaking his head. "Just a low rumble, like a heavy garbage truck driving by, or a mild earthquake. And a few of the customers said they saw a blinding green flash before the fire started."
Mary Jane frowned. A silent bomb that instantly turned two people to ash.
"Did Mr. Leeds do anything differently than the police?" she asked.
The owner scratched his chin. "Well, the guy knew his way around a crime scene. After the cops finished bagging the bodies and swept the floor, he ducked under the police tape. Picked a few things off the floor to take back with him. Not that there was much left."
A spark of intuition flared in Mary Jane's chest.
"Sorry to ask," MJ said, gesturing toward the caution tape. "But has your staff done a deep clean of the dining room since the blast?"
"Yes. We have a business to run," the owner grunted. "This happened right after Christmas. We do the deep scrubbing on holidays when the doors are closed."
Mary Jane offered a quick apology, then walked straight over to the cordoned-off corner. Taking advantage of the empty dining room, she dropped to her hands and knees. She borrowed a broom leaning against the wall and swept the bristles deep under the uncharred booths bordering the blast zone.
She pulled the broom back. Resting in the dust were two curved, rigid shards of orange plastic.
The owner blinked, surprised by her willingness to crawl on the dirty tile. "Excuse me," Mary Jane said, holding the shards up. "Do these look like the pieces Mr. Leeds took?"
"Yeah," the owner said, squinting. "Looks like some kid's plastic toy got blown to bits."
Mary Jane thanked the owner, slipped the plastic pieces into her pocket, and walked out into the biting winter air. She pulled the shards back out, holding the ribbed, orange plastic up to the sunlight to inspect the fracture lines.
That was when she noticed a guy in a winter jacket standing on the sidewalk a few feet away. He was intensely picking at the spider-webbed cracks in the restaurant's front window, muttering to himself.
Mary Jane recognized the profile instantly.
"Peter?"
Peter jumped. His hand jerked away from the cracked glass, and he spun around, his eyes wide. "MJ! Uh, hey. Good afternoon."
"What are you doing?" Mary Jane asked, tilting her head.
"Oh, just looking at the structural stress on this glass," Peter lied smoothly, recovering his composure. He pointed at the cracks. "I saw a news report online the other day about an incident here—"
"A bizarre, localized explosion," Mary Jane chimed in.
Peter nodded quickly. "Right. Tiny blast radius, almost zero sound, high heat output. Two casualties. I was just examining the glass stress-fractures to see if I could reverse-engineer the blast parameters."
"That is quite a coincidence," Mary Jane smirked.
"Yeah, small world, seeing you here..." Peter trailed off, his gaze drifting over her shoulder to the blackened floorboards visible through the window. He blinked. "Wait. Are you investigating this too?"
"Yep," Mary Jane said proudly, tapping her notebook. "I'm interning at the Daily Bugle. I'm helping a senior reporter organize the case file. He's trying to run a story, but he's hitting a massive brick wall with the NYPD."
"Does the Bugle have any inside info?" Peter asked, his tone suddenly serious.
"The only inside info the Bugle has right now," Mary Jane sighed, "is the knowledge that someone very powerful is actively suppressing the real inside info."
Mary Jane slipped her notebook into her pocket and looked at Peter. "You interned at the Baxter Building. You're the smartest guy I know. You want to play detective?"
Peter looked at the blast site one more time. He didn't think Mary Jane knew more than he did, but considering Ned Leeds worked right across from her, he needed to keep a close eye on the Bugle's movements. He offered a warm smile and nodded. "Sure. Let's compare notes."
"I know a coffee shop around the corner," Mary Jane said, leading the way.
As they walked down the frozen pavement, Peter's mind raced. He couldn't shake the glaring logical flaw in the Hobgoblin theory.
If Ned Leeds was the real Goblin, or even just a brainwashed decoy, his actions were sloppy. Bombing a restaurant was loud, sudden, and drew massive attention. But more importantly, Ned was just an investigative journalist. He didn't have the political leverage or the systemic power to silence the NYPD. Ned Leeds couldn't force Captain George Stacy to drop a double homicide investigation.
There was absolutely no doubt in Peter's mind. The real Goblin was lurking deep in the shadows, using Ned as a smokescreen while manipulating the entire city from the top down.