Markina murders Jonan Etxaide

Xabier Markina’s murder of Jonan Etxaide becomes undeniable only when Amaia Salazar asks Markina directly and he admits it. The revelation brings together two strands of the investigation: Amaia’s re-examination of the evidence at Jonan’s apartment and her pursuit of the pattern Jonan had been tracing. In the crypt, the search for an explanation becomes a confrontation with the person responsible, and Iriarte’s intervention prevents Amaia from deciding Markina’s fate herself.

Investigative Background

Jonan’s files preserve more than one line of inquiry. In a folder marked Salazar, Amaia finds photographs of her sister’s empty coffin and of the bones left after the desecration at Arizkun, alongside enlarged sections of a photograph of the garment Rosario wore when she fled. The folder also contains maps showing possible foot routes from Cueva de Arri Zahar. These materials connect personal losses and earlier investigations, but the files do not establish that any of them caused Jonan’s murder.

A separate file contains photographs that appear to show Judge Markina’s secretary speaking with Yolanda Berrueta in a café. Jonan’s scenario file also lists the addresses of babies whose sudden deaths had already been investigated. He had added Amaia’s sister to the map but removed Yolanda Berrueta’s children. When Amaia plots the locations anew, first against the N-121 and then against the course of the Baztán River, the pattern changes: excluding the Ainhoa cases leaves a line that follows the river from Erratzu through Elbete and Elizondo, and onward to Oieregi, where Haizea’s case extends it. This geographical work belongs to the wider inquiry Jonan was pursuing; it supplies context for the files Amaia examines, not a demonstrated motive for his murder.

Reconstructing Jonan’s Death

The physical evidence at Jonan’s apartment had left an apparent discrepancy: investigators found one cartridge case, although two shots had been fired. Amaia recalls the forensic diagram on which Doctor Hernández marked the fatal wounds and considered the trajectory. She had previously rejected the theory that the shooter was seated. Now another possibility appears plausible to her: the shooter may have stood in front of Jonan and fired from inside a coat pocket or through the coat’s lining, concealing the weapon.

That reconstruction would account for the upward angle Amaia sees in the trajectory and for a small piece of fabric carried into the curtains. Because the curtains were a similar color, the material had escaped notice. The idea remains Amaia’s revised hypothesis, rather than a conclusion confirmed in the supplied account. Its importance is that it makes the scene newly legible to her: a concealed weapon and a close-range encounter can explain details that the earlier theory did not.

Her reasoning does not remain abstract. As she considers how Jonan may have opened the door and let his visitor in, grief interrupts the forensic process. The scene she imagines is rooted in the evidence, but it is also inseparable from her knowledge of Jonan and the shock of his death. The investigation’s technical question—how the shots were fired—has become a question about who stood at the door.

The Confession in the Crypt

In the crypt, Amaia asks Markina whether he killed Jonan Etxaide, then repeats the question by name. Markina first asks her not to make him answer. When she insists, he says yes. The admission resolves the central uncertainty directly; it is not merely Amaia’s inference from the apartment evidence or from the files she has been studying.

Amaia raises a Glock and aims at Markina from only a short distance away. Her grief and anger are visible in her response, but the scene does not present her as having carried out the shooting: she has not fired when Markina raises another weapon. She recognizes it as Jonan’s pistol, making the object itself an immediate reminder of the murdered colleague whose death she has just forced Markina to acknowledge.

Intervention and Aftermath

Shots sound from the crypt entrance. Amaia cannot later say whether there were two or three, because the gunfire and thunder overlap. Iriarte is there with his weapon, and Markina falls beside Amaia. She takes Jonan’s pistol from Markina and looks to Iriarte for an explanation. Her response is grounded in the fact she has just heard confirmed: Markina killed Jonan.

The ending shifts the event from forensic reconstruction to immediate consequence. The concealed-shot theory may help explain the apartment evidence, but it is Markina’s admission that establishes his responsibility in the confrontation. Iriarte’s intervention stops Amaia from firing, while the recovery of Jonan’s pistol gives the scene a final, concrete link to the murder. The account leaves the precise number of shots in the crypt uncertain; it does not leave the identity of Jonan’s killer uncertain.