Amaia Salazar—Juez Markina

Amaia Salazar—Judge Markina is a professional relationship shaped by mutual reliance, procedural pressure, and a growing investigation into the Tarttalo murders. Markina’s decision to open the case gives Amaia’s developing theory a judicial footing; in return, she brings him evidence and a model of how the crimes may be linked. Their cooperation is not effortless: she challenges his timing, resists the formality of their meetings, and is uncomfortable when the inquiry turns toward her mother.

Opening the Case

Markina tells Amaia that he wanted to meet that day, although she had already warned him of an important meeting at the police station. She reminds him that he insisted, and he acknowledges that she is right: he asked, and she accepted. The exchange establishes a working relationship in which neither simply yields to the other. Markina has judicial authority, but Amaia is willing to press him on the demands her investigation places on her time.

At their meeting, Markina thanks her for her support and for deciding to open the Tarttalo case. Amaia answers that he had left her little choice, then adds that the evidence mattered too. His reply distinguishes the two grounds for his decision: the evidence supported the case, but he had trusted her first. That confidence is consequential. It gives Amaia room to pursue a pattern before every part of it has been established, while his acknowledgment makes clear that her professional judgment is itself part of the basis for their cooperation.

Building a Case from the Pattern

Amaia reports that investigators have found additional cases that appear to fit the victim profile and have identified a suspected collaborator. He had tortured his wife for two years; she was born in Baztán and was living in Murcia when he went to prison. After his release, he came looking for her, and the police issued an arrest warrant. Amaia believes the suspect fits the profile they are seeking, but distinguishes him from the person she thinks is directing the crimes.

She describes that directing figure as an inducer who selects people according to their violent histories and circumstances. The relationship with each recruit may last for some time, until the recruit’s life is close to spinning out of control; then, Amaia believes, a signal is enough to secure obedience. The theory gives Markina more than a list of apparently similar crimes: it proposes a mechanism connecting the perpetrators. It also preserves a distinction central to her reasoning—the abusive men commit the violence, but someone else may be shaping events and taking the severed arm.

The earlier evidence behind this distinction includes the cases’ recurring post-mortem amputation of the same arm, with the limb missing from the scene. Amaia notes that the known offenders otherwise share features associated with domestic violence: a close relationship to the victim, prolonged abuse, substance misuse in some cases, and violent, impulsive behavior. In the Logroño case, the killer died by suicide in his cell and left the same message on a wall, written in an unusual spelling and in handwriting matching the mark found elsewhere. For Amaia, those repeated details make imitation by unrelated offenders less persuasive and support the possibility of one coordinating individual.

Evidence, Meetings, and Professional Distance

Their cooperation unfolds amid obligations that do not pause for the investigation. Before a formal meeting with Markina, Amaia is maintaining a police patrol beside a church after earlier desecrations and continuing searches for cases of gender-based violence across Spain. She has refused to hand over Beñat Zaldúa as responsible for the church attacks, and the patrol also serves to reassure the commissioner after an earlier absence. At the same time, she is concerned that Nuria may be in danger. The meeting with Markina therefore takes place against a background of competing duties rather than in a protected space devoted solely to their case.

Amaia arrives at the Europa Hotel restaurant in her red police uniform, wearing the red beret and jacket marked with the Navarre emblem. The uniform makes her conspicuous among the restaurant’s guests; Markina rises to greet her and appears surprised by her arrival in it. He has chosen the restaurant to suit his tastes, but Amaia declines the wine brought to the table and asks for water. These details sharpen the contrast between the elegant setting and the urgent, practical work they discuss. Her uniform and refusal of wine keep the meeting visibly anchored in her police role, even as its setting invites a more personal reading.

An earlier conversation at home makes that boundary explicit. When James asks whether the judge will accompany her again to an upcoming Guggenheim exhibition, Amaia says he will not. She then explains sarcastically that she is going to seek a baby’s body in a cemetery and may need a judge’s authorization to exhume it, making judicial involvement sound like a practical necessity rather than a social arrangement. Her answer does not establish what Markina’s place in her private life is; it does show how readily she frames his relevance in terms of the work, and how she uses sarcasm when the professional and personal spheres threaten to overlap.

Testing the Medina Evidence

Markina also asks Amaia about the suspect who visited her mother at the sanatorium. She is uncomfortable discussing the subject with him, but provides the photographs and the Federal Bureau of Investigation report she has sent. The exchange shows the reach of their cooperation: the judge is not limited to authorizing a case, but asks about a lead tied to Amaia’s family and receives material she has assembled. Her unease, however, marks a limit to that openness; sharing investigative information does not make the subject emotionally neutral for her.

Their questioning also returns to Jasón Medina and the missing arm. Asked whether Medina had lied, Amaia recalls that he confessed to forcing his stepdaughter, strangling her, and violating her after death, yet seemed bewildered when asked about the amputation. After the impulsive killing, he had left to fetch a rope in order to imitate another crime he had read about; when he returned, Johana’s arm was gone. Amaia’s reasoning presses the gap between Medina’s crimes and the missing trophy: if he had not planned the murder, how could the Tarttalo have arrived at exactly the right moment to take it? The proposed answer is that the organizer already knew Medina and followed him, an inference that makes surveillance and recruitment central questions for the investigation.

The Shape of Their Collaboration

Markina and Amaia’s relationship is thus defined less by a settled partnership than by a sequence of consequential exchanges. He opens the case after weighing both the evidence and his prior confidence in her; she reports a new suspect, explains the inducer theory, and supplies material on the visitor to her mother’s sanatorium. Their dialogue also subjects her hypotheses to pressure, especially where the Medina case forces them to distinguish an offender’s actions from the unseen intervention that may connect separate crimes.

The cooperation carries a productive tension. Markina can provide judicial support, but Amaia remains responsible for pursuing leads across police jurisdictions and managing immediate risks elsewhere. He asks questions that draw her toward personal territory, while she answers with professional information and, at times, sharp humor. By keeping those frictions visible, the narrative presents judicial trust not as a solution to the investigation but as one of the conditions that allows Amaia to continue it.