Читать книгу Limb from Limb - George Hunter - Страница 10

During the course of their conversation, Stephen disclosed that he knew of a warrant out for his arrest, based on unpaid traffic tickets. “I decided not to pursue that, because I thought the detectives might want to talk to him, and if they arrested him, he might not talk,” Hughes said.

Hughes did, however, start asking tougher questions. “I asked him about the scratch on his nose, and I said he needed to tell me if there was a fight that night,” Hughes said. “He started getting nervous, saying, ‘No, no, no.’”

Stephen insisted it had only been a verbal spat, even though he admitted he’d had a few beers before Tara got home. He also mentioned that he kept a handgun in the house. “Then I asked him if we could send detectives to his house to ask further questions and look around, and he said we could,” Hughes said. “Basically, I think he wanted to come in here and hit a home run with me, get the missing report down on paper, and exclude himself as a suspect. He seemed to feel good about the interview.”

Hughes handed Stephen a preprinted witness statement form and asked him to recap his statement in writing. In a spidery, juvenile scrawl, the father of two poured out a story that filled two pages and spilled out of the lines provided into the document’s margins: I said it was not fair to the kids that they would only see her for one day, he wrote of the argument he’d had with his wife. She said “Tuff.”

Stephen stated that during the argument with Tara, he repeatedly said, “The kids are going to be disappointed if you’re not home Saturday,” Hughes wrote in his report.

As Stephen told his story, Sergeant Brian Kozlowski was reporting for work. Striding through the sheriff’s department lobby, he overheard Stephen relating his story to Hughes. Kozlowski later said one thing stuck in his craw: he had heard the man say his wife had been missing since Friday. The veteran detective wondered the same thing Hughes was wondering: why would anyone wait five days to report a missing spouse?

Finally, after more than an hour, Stephen’s deluge of information trailed off. Hughes told Stephen that detectives would be in contact with him. The cop then typed out his report and submitted it to his supervisor, who turned the case over to the detective bureau as Case #0700003638. A description of Tara Grant—five feet, six inches tall, 120 pounds, brown hair, brown eyes—was entered into the nationwide Law Enforcement Intelligence Network (LEIN).

The most intense investigation in the history of the Macomb County Sheriff’s Office was under way.