CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
By the time Jessie jumped out of the car at the Krantz’s Hollywood Hills home, there were emergency vehicles everywhere.
She rushed over to find the officer in charge while Ryan looked for a place to park on the narrow road. As she approached the house, she saw a familiar face. Sergeant Robert Frank, based out of Hollywood Station, had assisted her on two other cases in the past.
In his late forties, Sergeant Frank’s belly was in a battle with his belt, and what little hair he had left was more gray than brown.
While he exuded a worn-out, beaten-down demeanor most of the time, in Jessie’s experience, he’d proven to be a competent professional.
They could have been dealt a worse hand.
“I knew this would end up being one of your cases,” he said as she stopped in front of him. “The weird ones always are. Is Hernandez with you on this one?”
“He’s parking right now,” Jessie said. “What can you tell me?”
“Amanda Krantz, 28, was found strangled on a loveseat in the living room. A silk necktie was resting on the cushion beside her. It looks like it was the murder weapon.”
Jessie could picture the gray cashmere loveseat he was talking about. It was the same one that Amanda sat on yesterday when they spoke to her. The thought of that somehow filled her with even more empathy for the woman than she already had.
She also wondered if there might be some significance to the use of the tie.
In the previous murders, the medical examiners suspected that scarves were the murder weapons.
Why change it up now? Was that just the most convenient, easy-to-grab item?
Or was there something more meaningful—symbolic even—about it?
“Who found her?” she asked.
“The husband, Alexander Krantz. The first officers found him in the yard when they arrived. According to them, he was hysterical, refusing to go back inside. We took him into custody. He’s in the back of that squad car over there.”
“Why did you take him into custody?”
“Because he told the first officers on the scene that her death was his fault, that he was responsible. He even admitted that it was his necktie beside her.”
“Wait, did he actually say that he killed her?” Jessie asked. “Could he have been speaking more generally about feeling responsible for her death?”
“I don’t know,” Frank conceded. “All I have is what the arresting officers told me. They seemed dubious about how upset he was, too.”
“Why?”
“They said it felt over the top.”
“What felt over the top?” Ryan said, joining them.
“Alexander’s reaction to Amanda’s death. They arrested him,” Jessie told him before turning back to Sergeant Frank, irritated. “Sergeant, is there such a thing as ‘over the top’ when someone finds their spouse dead?”
Sergeant Frank’s expression turned sheepish. Before he could reply, she continued.
“And did your officers know that in the three days prior to his wife’s death, three other women, including two he dated in high school, were murdered in the same way?”
“I don’t think they were aware of that,” Frank said. “I certainly wasn’t.”
“So is it possible that he freaked out the appropriate amount at the magnitude of all that?” Jessie wondered.
“That’s more your area than mine, Ms. Hunt,” Frank told her. “But I will say that having been involved with multiple women who were killed in a short space of time would make me more suspicious of the man, not less.”
It was a fair point, one she hoped to address with Krantz when she spoke with him momentarily.
“So has he calmed down at all?”
“He was forcibly calmed,” Frank explained. “He started banging his head against the window, so an EMT had to sedate him. He’s really out of it right now. We were going to take him to the hospital before the station to check for a concussion.”
“Let’s make that happen ASAP,” Ryan told him. “The sooner he’s alert, the sooner we can question him.”
“I’ll have them take him now,” Frank said. “Did you want to check out the scene?”
“Please,” Jessie said.
She and Ryan followed Sergeant Frank inside, taking the same route that Amanda had guided them along yesterday evening.
When they emerged into the cavernous living room, Jessie intentionally averted her gaze from the loveseat, hoping to take in the rest of the room first. In her experience as a profiler, she found that once she saw a body, she could focus on nothing else.
So to avoid missing clues, she usually tried to save that for last.
There wasn’t much to see. Everything looked the same as the last time they were here, with one big exception.
Resting against the side of the coffee table was a carry-on suitcase.
Jessie recalled how just this morning, Amanda had said that she and Alex were planning to leave town tonight until the case was solved.
Apparently, she was packed and ready for a trip she would never take.
Jessie walked over to the loveseat. Standing silently next to it was the deputy medical examiner, a small man with meticulously parted hair and a thin mustache.
“You believe the tie was the murder weapon?” Ryan asked him.
“We’ll need to test for fibers embedded in the skin, but preliminary indications suggest so.”
“Do you have an approximate time of death?” Jessie asked.
“Not yet,” the M.E. said. “It’s too early for anything definitive, but based on body temperature, I’d surmise it was in just the last couple of hours.”
Jessie finally allowed herself to look at the victim. Amanda’s brown eyes were open and had petechiae, broken blood vessels that caused red dots, typical after choking. Her brown hair was all over the place, likely a result of struggling against her attacker, who probably strangled her from behind.
Jessie glanced down at Amanda’s feet and noticed for the first time that one of her feet had come out of her house shoe. She imagined it coming off in the struggle as the woman fought to survive.
Jessie looked away, feeling more than sympathy. There were the familiar stirrings of rage starting to churn in her gut. As soon as she recognized them, she made a point to acknowledge them and shut them down before they became too powerful.
But as that faded, she noted another unexpected emotion rising in her chest. There was a hint of shame, as if she were partly responsible for the woman’s death.
Maybe she should have pushed harder for the Krantzes to go to a hotel right away.
As soon as she left this house, she would double-check that all the other Thornfield friends had really done the same by now. Foot-dragging could be deadly.
Of course, if Alexander Krantz was the killer, that was all moot. Amanda wouldn’t have been safe anywhere, and the others were no longer in danger.
But unlike Sergeant Frank, she wasn’t yet convinced. In fact, right now, she wasn’t convinced of much of anything.