Confession

189 Daffodil Ave, December 30th, 2006, 10:00 PM

The night was quiet and cold, Markov was working on another one of his woodwork creations in his basement workspace. A windmill was waiting on a shelf behind him, a new hiding spot for the key to his apartment as he sold the one that was in the window that day and of course he retrieved the key prior to bagging that one.

There was a table to his left, and one to his right. On the table on the left were the fake donor cards that he had worked on a few weeks prior, there was still about 212 left and 12 of them were scattered upon the table. Some of the wood dust and chips had made their way over there and covered the cards.

Suddenly Markov heard a creaking coming from a floorboard in the showroom above. His first instinct was that it was somebody after the golden idol, but the chance of that was minimal, as they needed to find the key to the safe behind the painting first, and to do that they need to open his apartment up. The key was with him as the place that he usually kept his key was no longer there, so the thief would have to come to the basement.

The creaking became louder as Markov hid his chisel behind his back, ready to strike at the intruder.

Elliot opened the door, his tall 185cm figure was cloaked in light on his back. His face was in the shadowy area of the basement in front of the door.

"You really need to adjust the lighting on that desk lamp in case something is hiding in the shadows." Elliot relayed in his dark voice, he then turned on the basement's main light and every corner was illuminated, and Elliot's pale young face was revealed.

Elliot had sky blue hair and gorgeous green eyes, his hair was in a sharp style and his brows were thin and lashes were shorter than average. His nose was slightly rounder than a regular nose. He had no facial hair, and he wore star-shaped shades with white finish on the plastic parts. He was wearing a t-shirt with a t-rex on it and the t-rex was wearing a t-shirt with a human head on it and the dinosaur had a speech bubble saying; 'I don't know what this is on my shirt, but I don't think it suits me.' He wore long jeans with a rope instead of a belt, he didn't own a belt. He wore boots that were caked in sand from the area surrounding the building and the boots were a dark brown and they didn't have spurs.

"What are you doing here at this late hour, Elliot?" Markov asked in his kindly old voice, but there was a note of suspicion in his tone. He placed his chisel into a vacant slot in his tool belt.

Elliot looked straight down toward the forged donor cards. "You know, when I got the guys ID to inform the rangers about you shooting that guy, I distinctly remember that he didn't have an organ donor card. I was stressed and went to the bar, when I returned after having a pint, the guy had an organ donor card. I was too sloshed to figure it out, but now I see the full picture." Elliot explained. "You are a monster, killing of those thieves and then giving them those cards to profit of you killing them legally, I ought to report you to the ACB."

"They had it coming, they were foolish enough to come steal from me, they are leeches on society, I just found a way for them to give back is all, and I get to keep 25% of what those organs are valued at, it's a win for me, the hospital and one of the hospital's patients. The only one who loses is the thief. I haven't done anything wrong." Markov explained, dropping the façade completely.

"FORMAL would never agree to this, if they found out what you were doing, those legal killings to protect your shop and yourself become illegal, because you forged those donor cards." Elliot added. "When I leave here, I will report you."

Markov laughed slightly maniacally. "Oh, you're not leaving."

Markov rushed toward Elliot and Elliot's eyes shone in realisation; this old codger wanted to fight. Elliot dodged the attack and tried to retaliate with his own, but little did he know that for the interval between the date Markov left Everleason to the date he printed those advertisements, he'd been training his hand-to-hand combat skills with Joel Joyce, and he'd trained his gun wielding skills with Rodger Rounds. The old man dodged the attack with ease and exited through the still open door.

But Elliot wanted to escape, so he tried to run out the door, but the front door was locked, there was a button to unlock it, but Markov was guarding it.

"Last chance Doubledaze, you can live if you are willing to join my enterprise and continue my legacy after I depart from the world. So, I will only ask you this once. Will you be by my side, taking down thieves and then giving them to the hospital so they can give us 25% of the value of whatever organs they are able to keep, or would you like to leave and report me?" Markov inquired, his thief dispatching gun was already in his right hand, and he waved it about theatrically as he spoke.

"I would never side with someone as evil and depraved as you." Elliot spoke.

"Wrong choice." Markov announced and aimed the gun at Elliot's head. He shot it and Elliot managed to dodge and rushed at Markov with his long young legs, but as mentioned above, Markov's skills were trained through hard and arduous work with the best marksman on Rhombodian, so of course, Markov dodged the attack, watched Elliot almost run into a wall and shot him as Elliot turned to face Markov after regaining his balance.

The battle was over, and Markov had murdered Elliot in cold blood, his first actual legal murder. He had to cover it up by making it look like Elliot was threatening him.

Markov went into his apartment and collected a pair of gloves and put them on. He then took out a Darkrun gun that was loaded and took it downstairs and placed it into Elliot's hand and fired it upward, as if Markov made a run for the gun and forced Elliot to fire it toward the roof. He then took a pen knife and stabbed into a fake blood pack he kept under his armpit, making it look like he started to bleed out from a gun shot and making a red stain on his beautiful light brown jacket.

When the Aurime county rangers arrived to investigate the scene, Markov gave a wild story, the one that ended up in the police examination report, where he had shown a burst pack of fake blood in his jacket and explained that after he saw Elliot take out the gun while taking money from his register, he battled Elliot and Elliot shot through the blood pack and Markov played dead. Markov waited for Elliot to go upstairs and then grabbed his gun and then shot Elliot when he started approaching the painting.

The Aurime county took his story as true as they did find the safe key below the victim. They let Markov go free, as they believed that he killed Elliot in order to protect himself and his store. Little did they know that Markov had orchestrated a pretty convincing scene and that he had killed Elliot with purpose.

189 Daffodil Ave, January 14th, 2007, 2:34 PM

The air ran cold, all that Markov did on that day was explained in as much detail as you could fit on a single page on the scrunched piece that Dan had found behind the idol. There was no doubt that Markov wanted to confess his crime to himself only, having it written on a piece of paper from his diary and then hiding it behind a safe which you'd need a key from the diary to open it.

"Man, this mystery just gets better." Bill added. "We'd never think that Elliot was murdered by the old man if he didn't confess here in this diary." He laughed jovially, as if this was humorous to him.

"All I see is failure," Dan relayed. "How come none of the rangers at the scene 2 weeks ago spotted any oddities, even as the crime was written from the perspective of the criminal, I could see a mistake, a big one."

"What's that?" Bill stated.

"The bullet, the written tells us that it was fired after the victim had died and before Markov burst the fake blood pack, if that was true then there would be no blood on the bullet or in the area around where it had landed. That would have provoked a deeper investigation, but since that didn't happen that means that the rangers didn't notice the contradiction." Dan relayed.

Bill shook his head. "Some people just want the job done, what they did was just take Markov's story at face value and left, yes they shirked their duties, but can you blame them? Twelve other thieves had visited and died at this store in the weeks leading up to the murder, so it's obvious that he had time to practice his story."

Dan nodded. "Yes, that makes sense. Regardless, we now know the true motive of the three figures that paid a visit to this store earlier today to kill the old fool, they weren't just after retribution, if that was even part of their aim to begin with, they were here to avenge the killing of Elliot Doubledaze. The killers knew the victim from 2 weeks ago well, and must have been studying this place, looking for the right opportunity and method to take the old man down." Dan deduced. "If we find Elliot's friends, we find Markov's killers."

"Alright, why don't you go downstairs and determine the order of events with the V team, including you, Vincent, and I'll be up here contacting some people to find out who had a deep enough friendship with Elliot to take out the old man in his name." Bill explained.

Dan and Vincent nodded toward each other and Vincent opened the mahogany door to the right of the counter, allowing Daniel to go into the basement ahead of him.

Daniel walked down the stairs, content that when he emerged back to ground level, there would be a list of suspects waiting for him. Slowly , but surely, Dan was getting to the bottom of the mystery.