Into the Web

Additional disclaimers, which will cover ALL CHAPTERS!! just so my backside is covered...violence, cussing, mutilation (it IS Johnny the Homicidal Maniac in this pairing), child neglect/abuse, homicide, mention of/reference to an incident of pedophilia in one character's past, mention of rape, scarring/cutting (non-con), attempted homicide...anything I haven't covered here will probably be posted at the top of future chapters.


Into the Web

CHAPTER ONE

“Fuck me, am I the only one in this fucking jurisdiction that does any work?! That’s forty homicides now, and you don’t have a fucking clue who’s doing it??”

Federal Agent Dib Membrane slammed a file down on the police chief’s desk, absolutely seething at the tubby ball of lard. “Forty!! FORTY civilians dead, and you have NO witnesses, NO clues?? For fuck’s sakes, no wonder the FBI sent me in!!”

“Honestly, Sir, we can’t be everywhere at once…” the chief mumbled.

“Looking at your fat sorry ass, I’d say otherwise.” Dib snorted, pulling his coat on. “Take me to the café that got bombed yesterday and I’ll comb it over for what you and your lackeys missed.”

Dib’s eyes narrowed behind his glasses as he crouched down in the darkness with his flashlight, picking up a shred of fabric, depositing it into a small baggie and slipping it into his pocket. The police chief and a couple of his cronies looked on dumbly as Dib paced the scene, carefully picking up a small scrap of what looked like glossy paper, burnt at the edges. Pausing, Dib began to pick up similar scraps, grinning and cocking his head slightly. “Hmm, Beethoven. I have this album.”

The cops blinked at each other with blank expressions, until one finally spoke up. “So what? Lots of people listen to Beethoven, right?”

“Do you?” Dib muttered.

“Uh…no, but—”

“I rest my case.” He piled the scraps into a bag, shaking his head. “From what I see here, he had the bomb in his knapsack, which he dropped in the middle of the diner before running out.” Dib pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, looking around. “Why he set it off in this particular diner is anyone’s guess. But he left in enough of a hurry that the detonator was likely set for under ten seconds.”

One of the cops snorted. “We’re supposed to believe you know this kind of stuff? What are you, psychic?”

The Agent rolled his eyes. “I’d prefer not to dignify that with a response, but from the way the shrapnel is scattered around the doorway…” He walked out the entrance, pushing roughly past the group of uniformed idiots. “Okay, let’s pretend you guys are actually qualified for the job you’re doing. The doors to this café were made of glass, right?”

“Uh-huh…?” The Chief was already scratching his head.

“If you look, you’ll see that the glass is basically just scattered around the doorway here, which means that the doors were still open when the bomb went off. The glass was broken by flying debris, not by the explosion itself, which it would have been if the doors had been closed.”

The other officers gazed at him blankly.

Dib began to rub his temples. “Do you guys really have to be here while I’m working?”

*

Later that evening, Dib sat down at a desk in his lab, scattering the bits of evidence he’d gathered at the scene out on the surface, examining each one carefully before pulling out a map of the city and going through the list of homicides the police force had been kind enough to record for him.

Pinpointing each crime scene, Dib eventually sat back and looked at the mess of dots, shaking his head slowly.

No wonder the Agency had sent him in. There was no pattern. No reason dictated the locales or the number of victims. But the gruesome M.O. told him one thing for certain…

He was dealing with a maniac.

A homicidal maniac.