Already, the detectives were skeptical about Stephen’s veracity. Protests by family members and friends that Tara wouldn’t desert her children rang true. “I could not make [Stephen’s] story work,” Kozlowski said.
“A lot of red flags were going up,” McLean agreed. “He waited five days to report her missing. He has a scratch on his nose, and you have a businesswoman with two small children who hasn’t called home. Having small children myself, I know no matter what happens, you always call your kids.”
It was time to talk to the husband in his natural setting.
10
Kozlowski was planning to call the missing woman’s husband to set up an interview in his home when the phone in the detective bureau rang at about three that afternoon. Surprisingly, it was Stephen on the other end of the line, wanting to know how the case was going. Kozlowski explained he wanted to meet him at the house on Westridge Street, and Stephen agreed.
At about 5:00 P.M., the detectives slid into black Ford Taurus cruisers and swung out of the sheriff’s department garage, heading north toward Washington Township. Because McLean had started work early that day, she planned to go straight home after the interview, while Kozlowski would be heading back to headquarters. They took separate vehicles.
They rode west on Hall Road, the county’s perpetually jammed main east-west artery, then headed north on M-53. The northern end of the highway toward Washington Township was usually littered with dead raccoons and other small animals, which increasingly were forced out of their habitat by the rampant development in the area.
After making the seventeen-mile trek in about twenty minutes, the detectives pulled into the Carriage Hills subdivision and located the Westridge address. Stephen let them in and introduced the children and their nanny, Verena Dierkes.
McLean took Verena aside to the living room, while Kozlowski talked to Stephen in the kitchen. The kids were watching television. The au pair seemed in a rush to leave, McLean thought. “She was in a hurry to get out of there. She didn’t want to talk to us. She said she had somewhere to go.”
Verena, a tall, slender blonde who spoke in a soft German accent, had graduated from high school in her hometown of Aulhausen only eight months earlier. She still carried herself with an air of awkward innocence.
On the night of February 9, Verena told McLean, she’d gone out at about eight o’clock with a group of fellow au pairs to Mr. B’s, a bar and grill in nearby Shelby Township.
Verena partied at the popular nightspot for a few hours and arrived home at about 11:30 P.M. She confirmed Stephen’s account of a belligerent greeting when she walked through the door, adding that he told her he thought she was Tara. Stephen told her that the couple had been in an argument earlier in the evening, and Tara had left in a huff. The nanny said she and her employer stayed up and talked for a while and then retired to their respective bedrooms.
As Verena talked to McLean, she repeatedly told the detective she had to leave to meet friends. “The whole time, it was obvious she didn’t want to have this conversation,” McLean said. “I was suspicious of that from the beginning.”
McLean was able to talk to Verena for about ten minutes before the young woman departed for her night out. “She said it was unusual for Tara not to call to check on the kids,” McLean said. Verena also told the detective that it would have been odd for Tara to summon a cab or limousine service—which called into question Stephen’s earlier story to Deputy Hughes that Tara often hired a car to take her to the airport. “She also said she had no knowledge of any marital problems,” McLean said.
After Verena left the house, McLean talked to six-year-old Lindsey. “She gave me a tour of the house,” the detective said. “Both the kids were hilarious—just great little kids. Lindsey is like a little mom. She’s a really smart girl. She took me upstairs to show me their bedrooms, and then took me downstairs to show me the play area,” McLean said.
As the girl showed off her home, the detective kept her eye open for clues.
11
Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Kozlowski noticed that Stephen’s story was shifting. The mild-mannered “Mr. Mom” with the protruding green eyes told the deputy that Tara was going to leave for Puerto Rico on Monday, not Sunday as he had told Hughes earlier in the day.
Stephen elaborated on details of the previous Friday night: Tara had packed a larger suitcase, he said. She had said, “I’ll be out in a minute” to a mystery caller on her cell phone before stepping out of the house, not to be heard from again.
At the detective’s prompting, Stephen led him to the couple’s bedroom upstairs, where he logged on to the couple’s joint credit card account online, as well as to their LaSalle Bank checking account. Kozlowski noticed Stephen’s hand was shaking as he touched the mouse. Like the American Express account, each was devoid of activity since before the previous Friday. Wherever Tara was, she wasn’t charging anything or tapping the ATM machine.
Kozlowski then followed Stephen to the garage. He peered into Tara’s white Isuzu Trooper and Stephen’s Jeep, but he found nothing suspicious in either SUV—except the spiral-bound notebooks and folder lying on the backseat of Tara’s vehicle. One, clearly, contained work-related “to do” lists. It struck the officer as odd she would’ve left that behind. With Stephen’s permission, Kozlowski packed up the notebooks.
Stephen explained the scratch on his nose as an on-the-job injury—a piece of metal shaving had lodged under his safety glasses, he said, when he was doing some work at his dad’s shop. He also showed Kozlowski a scratch on his hand and a bruise on his leg, and agreed when the detective asked if it would be OK to send over an evidence technician to take pictures of the injuries.
Kozlowski then asked Stephen if there was any infidelity in their marriage. Stephen pledged that he was faithful to the marriage, but Tara had been involved with someone in the past. However, he said, the affair was over now.
“I’ve interviewed hundreds of people, so you kind of get a sense of what to look for in these situations,” Kozlowski said. “He appeared nervous, but he also was very forthcoming with information. At times he seemed to be overly helpful.”
To the detective’s trained ears, Stephen’s words weren’t ringing true. “I didn’t believe his story from the start,” Kozlowski said.
12
Lindsey led McLean into her mother’s bedroom. The veteran detective immediately picked up on a few things that looked suspicious. “Her closet was immaculate,” McLean said. “But nothing was missing. There were no spaces between the clothes to indicate she’d taken any clothes with her, and no shoes appeared to be missing, either.”
McLean’s gaze also was drawn to the three pairs of eyeglasses on the nightstand. “These are all things that you’d take with you if you were going somewhere,” the detective said. Another anomaly: In the small master bathroom, with its contemporary fixtures, a dark stain marred the wooden floor. Stephen told the detectives his wife caused the discoloration by spilling hair dye.
Tara did often have her hair dyed, though she usually patronized a fancy beauty parlor. In fact, Stephen and Tara once had an epic argument over her $200 tab for a haircut and color at the ritzy Salon Moulin Rouge in Shelby Township, Stephen later recounted.
McLean allowed Lindsey to show her around the rest of the house, where the child proudly pointed out her favorite pictures and playthings. As she escorted McLean, dark-haired Lindsey, a miniature version of Tara, confidently told the officer her mother was “at work in another country.”
But, she told the detective, “my mom will be coming home soon.”
13
After Lindsey’s tour of the home, McLean went back downstairs to talk to Kozlowski and Stephen. The officer asked