The Ghost at Eden Station
by J. H. Zech
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Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3 |
conclusion
“Hey, are you accusing one of us? Where’s your proof?” Katy asked.
“Let’s start with Jessica Li’s murder. We were all witnesses to her murder and, on the surface, the motive might be that she had dirt on the culprit. But if that were so, why did the culprit perform the charade of Xu Ling? Killing her quietly when no one was watching would have been the safest option. Why did they go out of their way to do this?”
“Because they’re crazy?” Rudy suggested.
Dahlia gave him the look of a deeply disappointed elementary school teacher, and he shrank into his coat. “Remember, someone claiming to be the ghost of Xu Ling made a threatening call, and this wasn’t public knowledge. So, it was not a coincidence that the culprit dressed up as Xu Ling.”
“Criminals wear disguises all the time,” Aileen countered.
“They wear masks. The costume we saw for Xu Ling was much more elaborate than any criminal would have reason to go to the trouble of putting on, and it would attract more attention by doing so. But this was precisely the point. The culprit wanted to be seen committing the crime as Xu Ling.”
“What would be the point of that?” Maximillian asked, skeptical.
“Twenty years ago, there was a redevelopment project at Eden Station. Someone claiming to be the ghost of Xu Ling made threats back then and mysterious accidents happened, leading to the project being cancelled after someone died. And now, there’s a new redevelopment project starting, and the ghost has returned. This ghost does not want the redevelopment to happen and is trying to scare the developers off.”
“I’m not scared! This has to go through. My neck is on the line!” Rudy’s knees weren’t as steady as his voice.
“Regardless, ‘Xu Ling’ at least had to try. Because a redevelopment would have unacceptable consequences for them.”
“I did wonder about that,” Richard interjected. “Normally crimes are committed by people with something to gain or lose. But for this project, I didn’t find anyone who would have such a motive.”
“You didn’t look hard enough,” Dahlia chided. “Show them the newspaper article.”
Richard opened a suitcase and took out a news article, panning to show everyone. “This is the first article written about the Xu Ling case fifty years ago, though I’m not sure how it relates to the case today.”
“The case today actually started fifty years ago. The rail workers building Eden Station were on strike, but the alliance between the Yurazanians and Centrosians was fragile. The death of Albert Koth was the trigger that turned them against each other. The investigation had barely started, but this article was the first written about the murder and squarely blamed the Centrosians. Funny enough, Albert’s body went missing during the ensuing race riot, so we can never know the true culprit. This riot led to the lynching of Xu Ling, and his spirit is supposedly behind the incident twenty years ago and recently.”
“Surely you can’t be suggesting a ghost from fifty years ago is haunting the city,” Aileen said. “We must be careful about making such inflammatory statements. Eden is a diverse, multicultural, and peaceful city. We don’t need to stir the pot and create tensions.”
Katy put her hands on her hips. “Don’t go on about that pompous nonsense. There’s still plenty of discrimination in this city, which you’d know if you listened to anyone outside your bubble. You don’t get to proclaim peace by covering your ears and sweeping everything under the rug.”
Richard cleared his throat: “Anyway...”
“Ms. Hernandez is right,” Dahlia said. “You could say the crux of this case is something that was swept under this rug. Look carefully at the key detail of this news article. Who was it that incited the race riot by publishing such an obviously inflammatory story without evidence? Who had something to lose if Eden Station were redeveloped? It’s you, Maximillian.”
Everyone turned towards him.
He threw up his hands in front of himself. “Now hold your horses. I’m being accused of murder here based on nothing!”
Dahlia pointed to the name written on the article: Maximillian Lucius. “You were just seventeen or eighteen years old at the time. You had gotten your first job at the newspaper. And you were the one who accused the Centrosians of murdering Albert Koth.”
Maximillian turned red. “Well, I admit, that was not my best piece of work. But that was a mistake I made as a teenager a long time ago. You can’t seriously claim that this is proof that I murdered someone.”
“Someone? That’s an interesting choice of words. The only person murdered in the recent case is Jessica Li. Normally you would say ‘murdered Jessica’ or ‘murdered her’, but you said ‘someone.’ Is there another person you have in mind?”
“Such sophistry. I obviously meant Jessica. And when she was murdered, I was with everyone here. It couldn’t have possibly been me.”
“And that’s exactly the trick the culprit used to make us think it couldn’t be them. We assumed that we saw the moment Jessica was murdered.”
“What? We all saw it with our own eyes!” Rudy yelled.
“We saw a circle of light appear on the opposite platform where there were no light sources and saw Jessica being hanged, but the train cut us off from reaching her, and when it passed, there was no light, and Jessica was dead. How do you explain this?”
“They used a flashlight?” Katy suggested.
“You’re on the right track. But think: was it a coincidence that the light turned on just a few seconds before the train blocked us and was gone afterwards? If this seems too convenient to be a coincidence, why did the culprit need to prevent us from reaching Jessica even though we had already seen her die?”
Dahlia pulled out the broken piece of black plastic. “I found this near the train tracks right after the murder. I wasn’t sure what this was but, after doing some research, I think I have an idea. What we saw was not Jessica’s murder. It was a recording of her murder projected onto a wall by a drone!”
“That’s crazy,” Richard said. “What kind of killer would do something so complicated?”
“The maniac needed to accomplish three things. To eliminate Jessica who had been poking too close to the truth. To scare people off by showing that Xu Ling was willing to kill to block the redevelopment. And to secure their own alibi.
“They called Jessica out shortly before we were all scheduled to meet, and then he murdered her in costume while recording it. Then, when we had all assembled, he sent a drone with a projector to play the recording. Since train schedules are set ahead of time, he could wait, knowing the train was coming soon, and hit play with a remote right when it was about to come.
“But if we could have gotten close to where the murder was supposedly happening, then we would have realized it was just a projection. Therefore, the train blocking us was absolutely necessary to prevent us from realizing the deception. Once the train cut off our line of sight, and the projector was turned off, the drone flew away.
“The piece of plastic I found was a part of a drone blade. And the actual body of Jessica was hidden in the dark just outside the range of the projection. Since it was dark and the train had blocked our sight temporarily, we wouldn’t notice that the body had seemingly shifted.”
“Now wait just a minute,” Maximillian fumed. “I’ve been listening to this drivel for a while, but all this is pure speculation. Occam’s Razor says the murder happened as we saw it. You’ve made up a complicated fantasy about drone projections.”
“The murder this time to stop the redevelopment. The incidents twenty years ago to stop the redevelopment then. The news article you wrote about Albert Koth’s death fifty years ago. The missing body. How do you explain the link between these?” Dahlia asked.
“I don’t need to explain anything. You drew a link yourself, no different than a conspiracy theorist tying strings between pins on a board.”
“Why did you kill Jessica Li?”
“I didn’t!” Maximillian jerked his hands up.
“You could have done your act with anyone. But you chose her specifically. She’s a journalist who was about to reveal some shocking truth, and she’s murdered right before that happens. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that that truth would be damaging to someone.”
“What is this truth? Where is it? Let’s see the evidence! I bet there isn’t any.”
“Why are you so sure about that? How would you know?”
Maximillian’s eyes darted around. “I-I haven’t done anything wrong. Of course there’s no evidence.”
“Jessica still had the SD card in her purse.”
“That can’t be! I—” Maximillian cut himself off.
“Got you.”
“This is entrapment.”
“No, you just dug your own grave. Honestly, it wasn’t necessary since we have you for the incident twenty years ago and the incident fifty years ago, but it just wouldn’t feel complete unless I got you for Jessica, too.”
“What is the meaning of this?”
“Jessica probably gave you an SD card or some other physical media with proof you were behind the incident twenty years ago. You likely destroyed it after murdering her. But come on, now. You actually thought that was the end of the story. She had a backup on the cloud. What journalist would hand over evidence to the prime culprit with no backup? It was only a bargaining chip to get you to confess, not the opportunity you thought it was. The police have her files now.”
Richard nodded. “You’re going away at least for that one, and with your statement just now combined with everything else, we have you for Jessica’s murder, too.”
“And one last thing. The reason why all this happened. It was to prevent the redevelopment of Eden Station. But how would that affect you so that you’d go to such lengths to prevent it? And that brings me back to the news article you wrote. There’s only one visible wound on the head in the picture. And you’re not a medical expert. Yet you clearly wrote that two blows to the head were delivered. How did you know that?”
“I don’t remember. I must’ve read it somewhere.”
“That’s impossible. You were the first to publish an article about this, and the police didn’t get a chance to properly examine the body due to the riots. The only person who could have known about this fact was you.”
“Okay, then I was mistaken. I was just a teenager when I wrote that.”
Dahlia shook her head. “Still in denial, are you? This brings me back to why. Why did you not want Eden Station redeveloped? Where did Albert Koth’s body go?”
Aileen gasped. “Good heavens. You mean?”
“Yes, exactly. Underneath Eden Station lies the body of Albert Koth. And if his body were discovered, a medical examiner could determine whether he received one or two blows to the head. If there were two, then it would definitively prove it. The ghost of Eden Station, the ghost of Xu Ling, is none other than the man who set in motion his lynching, the man who murdered Albert Koth.” Dahlia pointed: “You, Maximillian Lucius!”
Maximillian sank to his knees and cried. “Just put me out of my misery. I can’t do this anymore. Every night, I’ve been tormented by the ghost of Xu Ling, telling me he knows that it was my treachery that led to his lynching. The redevelopment would spell the end of everything I’ve worked for.”
“The one thing I don’t know is why you killed Albert Koth,” Dahlia said.
“I didn’t know him. The owner of the rail company building the station, Otto Zweitt, paid me a hefty sum to get rid of Albert Koth and blame it on the Centrosians. That was his way of breaking the strike. I was young, poor, and greedy. I took up his offer. It wasn’t worth living my life like this.”
Dahlia sighed. “Hard to say if you’re a sociopath or an idiot.”
Maximillian chuckled in despair. “There’s one more thing you should know, though you’ll find out soon enough anyway. It’s not just Albert down there. After the lynching, the local political leaders and Otto wanted to get rid of Xu Ling’s body so that the city wouldn’t be mired in endless federal investigation. The dirty work came to me of course, and I buried him in the middle of the night, right next to Albert.”
Katy leaned back and let out a deep breath.
Aileen was clutching her head. She probably wasn’t getting re-elected after finding literal skeletons in the city’s closet.
Rudy bit his nails. It was tough being in his position. The project was going sideways because of two dead bodies he had no control over.
Richard walked up to Maximillian and pulled him up by the arm. “Maximillian Lucius, you’re under arrest for murder. Let’s go.” As he led him to the car, he looked back at Dahlia and winked. “Thanks for helping out.”
She blushed and pouted. “I’m charging extra this time. And I’m billing the police department for my medical fees, too.”
* * *
Dahlia was sipping boba at a table on the roof of her apartment with Richard sitting across from her.
“How’s your leg doing?” Richard asked.
“As good as it can be, considering I was shot. The doctor said it will take some time to heal, and then I should go to physical therapy, but I’m expected to make a full recovery.”
“That’s good to hear. I’m sorry you had to go through all that.”
“It wasn’t your fault. And this means I’m really taking a vacation this time, no matter how desperate the chief is.”
Richard smiled. “Fair enough. I made sure the Eden Times credited you with solving the case. I’m sure even the Chief couldn’t endure the embarrassment if he had to call you in a second time in such a short time frame. The mayor would question why we pay him so much.”
“I certainly question it.”
“I don’t expect anything big to happen for a while, but this time it looks like the Eden Station redevelopment will proceed. That whole station’s going to be gone.”
“Good riddance. I don’t like the idea of a station built on top of corpses. The new one will be much better anyways. I’m glad Rudy isn’t getting fired, though. He might’ve been even more nervous than Maximillian.”
“The city is changing for the better. Atlantis Co. agreed to add a museum about the railroad workers to the project proposal in order to bring to light their circumstances and past wrongs. That’s the kind of thing you like to hear, right?”
“I’m sure it’s merely a token gesture to smooth over the scandal, but I’ll take it.” Dahlia smiled and sipped some more tea.
She stared off into the distance where the grey station lay. Eden was, as its name suggested, built to be a paradise, a beautiful city with great schools and low crime. But in reality, all the unpleasantness had been swept under the rug, and they had caught a glimpse of the skeletons underneath.
Eden Station was a physical manifestation of that unpleasantness, and soon it would be gone. The city would not sweep it back under the rug but actually reckon with it and clean up. The ghost at Eden Station would finally be laid to rest. Dahlia knew, though, that there were many more ghosts out there, waiting for someone to remember them.
Copyright © 2025 by J. H. Zech
