The Secrets of Confessions ✔️

Chapter 24: The Motive Map

Motive is always one of the most important parts in trying to figure out a murder. They really can help tie together the case. It's like the sweet, complementary icing on top of the flavorful cake that just makes everything sensible and brings it to life, in a weird sense. Even then, motives can be one of the hardest things to uncover.

Any murder mystery fanatic would know that in 90% of murder cases, there's the same two motives; money, and lust/love.  The other 10% of murders are random or have some other motive that I'm not a hundred percent positive of. Even then, I have a few ideas on some potential suspects. The only problem is filling in the blanks.

It's like making a gigantic T chart as to whether the motives match up or not. Some of them are easy, thankfully, but others don't have the same story.

There's one thing that I can thankfully conclude from the murder. It was someone who was close to my mom that killed her. Stabbing is a crime of passion, as you witness life slowly evaporate from the person's life as you stab them to death. Had it been a more random crime, such as a burglary gone wrong, my mom would have most likely been shot or hit over the head with something.

Strangulation would be an extremely rare thing, but stabbing is pretty much impossible. Stabbing takes lots of calculation, is a complete mess, and also would require lots of anger. Anger especially factors into this because my mom was stabbed over 40 times, so it must have been someone who was especially angry at her.

Sadly, anger is subjective, and there could be hundreds of reasons behind a certain kind of anger. So anger isn't the best tool to deduce why someone murdered another.

Arjun was the first one to come in my mind, since he's the one who served time for his murder. Unfortunately, his motive is as clear as crystal. His wife cheated on him, with her best friend, which makes things a hundred times worse. I wouldn't be surprised that the police thought he was the one who did it.

Plus, 90% of the time, the spouse is the one who commits the murder or is the conspirator. Honestly, all the arrows point to Arjun right now, but there's a huge problem.

Why would he wait 5 years to commit a murder? Holding a grudge against someone is perfectly reasonable, but would that grudge be enough to murder a woman so brutally? If he was so mad at her, why not just murder her right after the baby is born?

There's so many problems with it. He waited 5 years to stab my mom to death, and that takes an awful lot of patience that even I don't have. Arjun may have the most obvious motive, but even then, it's probably one of the motives that has the most holes in it that I don't think were ever filled up.

Mason, of course, is next. As the person whom she had an affair with, and considering he found her attractive enough to get in bed with her, there could be a solid motive on his part. In lots of cases, love or lust is a motive for stabbing people to death. "What if Mason never got over my mom, she rejected his advances, and then he got angry and stabbed her to death?" I think to myself. That's an extremely solid motive to kill my mom, but the question is, would he really do it?

Sure, he loved my mom a lot, but would rejecting his advances be a solid reason for Mason to snap and stab her to death? Plus, he was dating, and probably even engaged, to Sarah. Is Sarah just a distraction from his love for my mom? Is this all something that is meant to make him look innocent? "That affair was over 5 years ago, and I'm dating another girl. I couldn't have done it." It sounds like the best cover story ever.

But, I don't have any solid evidence to back it up. My mom never mentioned it in the diaries so far, and Mason isn't someone who gets angry a lot. His motive has the most possibility, but is the least supported so far. This is probably my worst nightmare; having a perfectly logical motive, but not having ANY evidence whatsoever to support it. Why must my dilemma come to this?

Cody is the next one that I attempt to decipher in terms of motive. My mom has hinted about him the most in diaries, but so far, his motive has the weakest evidence supporting it. Along with Mason, everything is very circumstantial. I'm not a hundred percent confident when it comes to my mom's diaries, considering that it's diaries.

My mom could be pulling an Amy Dunne and completely pointing fingers at the wrong person. She could be using the diaries as the perfect accelerator for pointing fingers at Cody and accusing him of the crime, instead of Arjun.

If she were to do that, then there's one question that still lingers. Why? What would be her motive to point fingers at Cody instead of Arjun? If anything, if she knew that Arjun was probably going to come back and murder her, she would've written about how he's a terrible human being and all that jazz.

Instead, the diaries are pointing their fingers at Cody. I haven't found much forensic evidence against Cody for me to fully point a finger towards him, but I'm willing to do so. However, since he was in a wheelchair around the time of the murder, it would've been seriously hard for him to stab my mom to death.

It would've been a little bit easier if he had something to hit over her head to knock her out, then he could finish the job there. But, since there was such little bruising and trauma on my mom's body, it's not something that is very possible. Cody may have the most people pointing towards him, but overall, he seems like the least likely person.

Finally, we get to the last person whom I suspect. Sarah. Unfortunately, with her, she's the person who's probability for my mom's murder is extremely low. My mom never really mentioned any reason that would imply that she hated Sarah in any way, and she doesn't have much of a possible motive. She was one of my mom's best friends, but the possible motives for her murdering my mom are very few in number.

The only possible one that I can see happening is her getting jealous of my mom for doing the dirty with Mason, and as a result she didn't want to see my mom as a threat anymore. But thinking about that motive just makes me want to laugh. Sarah is the last person to think of such thoughts. Hell, she hates killing flies because of the thought of taking away their lives. She's just not that kind of person.

And that's what makes this whole thing so complicated.

"God, why me?" I think to myself, as I write all my thoughts down in that notebook. This whole thing is just one complicated mess. There's so many "what if's" that it's driving me crazy. I can't fathom which one could have killed my mom, because each one has a completely logical aspect, but then there's that one exception that makes you say, "Think about it, dude."

It all makes me want to rip my hair out. The worst part is, I can't really talk about it to any of her past friends. If I do, it'll automatically raise eyebrows, and it's worse when I consider almost all of them suspects. It feels like someone's holding me by the throat when it comes to the case and if I decide to escape, I'll either break my neck or bleed out. I guess there's only two things to rely on.

The diaries and the autopsy report.