The Curse of Eden Square
by J. H. Zech
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Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3 4 |
part 1
Eden Square, 1920
Jerry slammed the car door closed and stretched his arms and legs. The life of a baker was lonely in some ways. The sun had yet to rise, and the parking lot was empty aside from his car. Holding a lantern in front of him, he walked through the entrance of Eden Square. Though the walk was desolate, the old jacaranda in the center made him feel at peace. It was always there for him and would be here a century from now when he was long gone.
He trotted through the open brick expanse of the square and stopped in front of the jacaranda for his daily ritual. He held up the lantern to admire the tree. Jerry yelled and fell backwards. A Black man was hanging from its branch.
* * *
Present Day
Dahlia Williams sighed as she scrolled through the news feed on her phone.
“What’s wrong?” Inspector Richard Gim asked her as he sipped hot tea. His handsome face was sparkling too much for pre-caffeine Dahlia.
She spun around in her grey office chair and stopped at her walnut desk. “People are getting noisy about the curse of Eden Square.”
“Are they really? People talk about it all the time. Gruesome crimes rarely happen around here, so people are bored.”
“We had that gruesome murder at Eden Station a few months ago.”
“Exception to the norm. Statistically, you’re more likely to be struck by lightning.”
“Still, there’s a lot more chatter than usual. The algorithm must be boosting it, because people are more hyped about it lately. That gives me a bad feeling.”
“You’re not big on superstition. Why start now?”
Dahlia sighed. “I hope you’re right. But it doesn’t sit well with me that none of the serial murders were ever solved. Anyway, what brings you here? The police chief sent you to butter me up first thing in the morning?”
“There have been a series of vandalism incidents at the precinct station lately.”
Dahlia raised an eyebrow. “The Chief wants to hire the best detective in the province to investigate vandalism? Surely even the overpaid slackers at Headquarters can handle that much.”
“Way to toot your own horn. And, no, we don’t really need the ‘best detective in the province’ to catch a few teenagers and college students spraying graffiti.” Richard made sure to emphasize his point with air quotes.
“But?”
“But this has become a political matter, and he needs you to come up with a creative solution.”
“A creative solution?” Dahlia scoffed. “You mean he wants me to come up with a believable lie to make his headaches go away, and it needs to come from someone outside the police department, so it looks independent.”
Richard averted his eyes. “More or less.”
“I don’t like this. I’m someone who works for the truth, and you’re asking me to lie.”
“Come on. I assure you, it’s for a good cause.” Richard clasped his hands beseechingly around Dahlia’s.
She blushed and shook him off. “If it’s you asking, I can at least hear you out. But that doesn’t mean I’ll do it; I still have my principles.”
“Thank you. People have been spraying pigs and variations of ‘F the pigs’ on the walls. Now, ordinarily, we would make a show of arresting one or two teenagers and sentencing them to community service for a few months.
“But the current political situation has complicated matters. The department has been actively apprehending refugees fleeing north from the war in Mundo Nuevo, and this has been unpopular with a lot of people, so some are turning to vandalism.”
Dahlia nodded. “Yes, I’ve heard about that. But is that such a big deal for the police?”
“Well, normally no. But His Excellency has made it his position that the refugee crisis must be contained at all costs, and any cities not complying are being sanctioned. While our department has been following all the rules, the vandalism is giving the impression that Eden City is in defiance, and the Vice Administrator has mentioned our city by name. The Chief and the Mayor are concerned we’re about to be sanctioned.”
“And the reason you can’t just catch the teenagers this time is...?”
“If we catch them, then we are implicitly saying that Eden City’s residents are defying the nation. But if we do nothing, then the problem continues, and we get sanctioned anyway. So, this is where you come in. You need to find some clues that point to outside agitators being the vandals. Any locals we catch, we’ll say were just instigated and misled by outsiders, and we’ll increase security at night to prevent future vandalism.
“I know this doesn’t make you feel good, but this will help Eden avoid being sanctioned. If the national government freezes all our funding and sets up checkpoints everywhere, that’s going to devastate the city. The downtown is on shaky footing right now and can’t afford that kind of disruption.”
Dahlia sighed and buried her face in her hands. Compromise and lie, or see her hometown’s economy in tatters. “What would you do if you were me?”
“I was never as gung-ho about the type of justice you want, so I’d be willing to tell any lies to protect the city.”
She spun her chair away and faced the window, peering out into a tree-lined parking lot. “Take me on a date somewhere nice in downtown after this is over.”
“Is that your price?”
“I need you to make me feel like I’ve done the right thing. That I’ve saved something worth saving in exchange for my integrity.”
Richard’s bittersweet smile was reflected in the window. “Of course. You can blame it all on me if you need to. I’m heading back to HQ. Let me know if you need anything.” He left the office.
* * *
Later that day, Dahlia rode her electro-bike down the trail from her office to Eden Square. A cool breeze ruffled her long flowing hair and shook loose some petals from the jacaranda trees surrounding the paved path. The purple petals danced around her and scattered as she blitzed through on her bike. While she passed through the darkness of a tunnel, Dahlia caught glimpses of the petals settling back down to the earth in the rearview mirror.
The square was not too far from the local university, so the message board would always be full of random flyers and sticky notes from college students and visitors. No doubt at least some of them would have anti-police messages. If any of them could be traced back to some out-of-town influencer or podcaster, they could be made into the scapegoat agitator.
She locked her bike to a rack on the outer edge of the square and headed for the front entrance. Above the archway bridging two beige stucco buildings was a security camera. A sign on the wall leading into the center read: “If you see something, say something.” Perhaps it was just her nostalgia talking, but she had liked it in the “good ol’ days” when you weren’t being watched all the time. But nobody in the crowd flowing in and out of the archway besides Dahlia paid any mind to the camera or the sign.
Various vendors selling everything from coffee and yogurt to handicrafts and clothes had their storefronts open onto the passageway to the square center. In a mostly boring city, this was one of the liveliest areas.
At the square center, a small group holding signs below the large tree chanted, “Don’t bend the knee! Stand up for refugees!”
A young man with an over-the-top military outfit holding a selfie stick was filming the group. An influencer. She was definitely in the right place to find a patsy.
“Hey, everybody! It’s Jeff Pioneer! I’m here in Eden Square today. Yep, that Eden, famous for being a peaceful, prosperous city. Or was. It’s been overrun by hordes of refugee thugs, and here we have some dweebs cursing out the police trying to protect the city. Let’s see if we can get a rise out of them.”
Jeff ran up to the protesters. “How’s it feel to be rooting for the thugs destroying the city?”
“Shut up, you bootlicker,” said a purple-haired protestor in a white jacket.
“Did I hit a nerve, sweetums?” Jeff glanced down and then up. “Oh, my mistake, sir.”
The protester flipped the finger at him.
“And that, is the true nature of these thin-skin dweebs. Thanks for watching!”
Dahlia felt old. The city used to be much quieter before the influencers started making noise. Jeff was stupid enough to be the scapegoat, but it might be a hard sell to say he was behind the vandalism since he was pro-police. But then again, it would be possible to spin it as intentional false flag agitation for content virality. She tabled the decision and went to look for some more options at the message board on the other side of the square.
Several anti-police messages had been pinned to the corkboard, but most were just generic messages such as “F the pigs” with no discernible features. A flyer caught her eye with bold letters reading JOIN THE RESISTANCE. The contact details indicated it was from some group called the National Democracy League. It sounded out-of-town enough to be an option. She tore off one of the phone number slips.
Dahlia needed to do some research. She stopped by Mike’s Hot Dogs in one of the passageways to buy a corn dog.
“Enjoy!” said a middle-aged man in an apron, who was presumably Mike. Unless it was a chain store. You never knew these days. Half of the chain stores wore names that sounded like mom-and-pop shops.
She sat down at the outdoor tables beside a café named Tea World and ordered some milk tea to have with her corn dog. A young waitress wearing thick, round glasses and with her hair tied back brought her the tea. “Please let me know if you need anything!”
“Thank you, Shelly.”
The waitress had a start. Dahlia pointed to her name tag.
“Oh, right. Sorry. I’m new here.”
Dahlia had her little brunch and tea while browsing her phone for details on Jeff Pioneer and the National Democracy League. One of these would probably do. The story she came up with wouldn’t need to be ironclad, only plausible enough at a surface level to take the heat off the mayor.
It had become afternoon by the time she was done researching. Jeff Pioneer was a so-called “rage baiter” who made a living off of posting inflammatory videos of people’s twisted, angry expressions they made when he provoked them. He had a juicy rap sheet of libel, DUIs, and a divorce where he lost custody of his child on account of abuse.
The National Democracy League was loosely organized, but their de facto leader was someone named Laura Baumer. She had a long history of aggressive activism that had resulted in several charges for assault and obstruction of justice. And she was from the eastern provinces, as far as it could get from Eden City.
“Excuse me, could you spare me twenty bulons? I have a child who’s starving.” A woman with deep-set eyes wearing a dark red dress stood by Dahlia’s table.
She chuckled. “You must think I’m stupid.”
“Pardon?”
“If you were really someone with a starving child, you would be at the welfare office or the bread line, not panhandling in a nice dress in the town square. There are two more people wearing the same kind of dress going around the square doing the same thing. It’s obvious you’re all a part of a scam group. Get out of my sight.”
“Tch!” the woman in the dress stormed off.
Dahlia had finished her research, so she put her cup and saucer away at the return area next to the counter and headed out through one of the passageways, passing by another sign reminding her she was being watched.
Something hit her head. She brushed it off, and a small branch fell at her feet.
“Sorry!” a man on a ladder with shears half-buried in a tree waved at Dahlia.
“Don’t worry about it.”
He looked at her face and froze. What was up with him? Dahlia thought he would say or do something, but he merely observed silently as she walked past the entrance and towards the bike rack. Her detective instinct wanted to investigate, but if she pursued every suspicious thing without cause, there’d be no end to it. She left it alone and rode her bike back home.
* * *
The following day, Dahlia went to Eden Square early in hopes of eavesdropping on the protest group as they arrived and planned for the day. Perhaps she had gotten there too early, though. Only a few customers were there. The rest were the staff sweeping the floor, doing maintenance, or delivering cargo to the businesses.
The purple-haired lady who was protesting the other day arrived, and Dahlia sat on one of the benches at the edge of the square with her back to the tree and earbuds in. She spied on the protester through the reflection on her phone. The lady raised her phone and made a call.
“Hey, Laura, I’m here.” Laura? Perhaps Laura Baumer. The other person on the phone said something, to which the purple-haired lady nodded. “Yes, some opposition showed up. It’ll be done soon.”
What did that mean? Dahlia watched the lady and her merry band of protesters for the rest of the day but didn’t learn anything else. And Jeff Pioneer didn’t show up. In the afternoon, Dahlia packed up and returned home. It was disappointing, but that’s how investigations often were. Patience was the name of the game.
* * *
Copyright © 2026 by J. H. Zech
