Empty Promises

around on Steve, and they all knew it. She went from home to work, then to day care to pick up Chris, and then home again. But Steve seemed obsessed with the idea that she was cheating on him. Her women friends asked each other, “When would she have the time?”
    Occasionally, Steve stood out on the green campus at Microsoft and Jami—as well as everyone in her unit—could see him watching her windows. It was to them the sickest kind of voyeurism. Steve and Jami still lived together; they were still married. Why was he so obsessed?
    Once, Jami had to call Security to have Steve escorted from her office when he shouted so loud that his voice carried to nearby cubicles. Jami was terribly embarrassed, but nothing seemed to embarrass Steve; he felt entirely within his rights as he shadowed Jami. In his mind, she still belonged, totally, to him. The words he had once written to her in a sentimental card, words that had thrilled her at the time, came back to haunt her: “I can’t stand not having you within my sight.”
    Janet Gilman and Jami still had lunch together, most often at the Taco Time at the Bear Creek Shopping Center in Redmond. “Steve started to phone me,” Janet said. “He wanted to verify that Jami had gone to lunch with me—where we went, what we had to eat, even what we talked about. After a few times, I just told him I wasn’t going to do this anymore. He was spying on her.”
    Steve had good reason to worry; Jami was planning her escape with utmost secrecy. The wife he had controlled for a half-dozen years was straining at the bars of her cage. With Janet and with other women friends, she was now talking about how she could get Steve to move out of the house. She was making the payments, and it was her Microsoft stock that secured the loan from his mother. She said that she wouldn’t be stealing anything from Steve because he had put virtually nothing into the house. It seemed only fair to her that she and Chris should have a home.
    Sometimes Jami seemed strong and confident that she could have a life after Steve. She actually thought she could remain in her new house. She asked people about changing the locks, wondering if that would be enough to keep him out.
    At other times, though, Jami was more realistic, and willing to find another place to live where Steve wouldn’t know her address. She could never leave the Seattle area—she was too close to her parents and brothers. Most of all, she would never leave Chris; she knew Steve would fight her for custody, just to make her life hell. She also knew that she and Chris belonged together. “She wanted to get away,” Sherri Gruber, another friend, said, “but she was afraid—afraid for her life, and she wanted to take Chris with her. She was looking for anywhere she could hide from Steve.”
    Sometimes Jami was pessimistic and stoic: “I’ll never get away from Steve,” she said flatly to Janet Gilman. “It doesn’t matter where I go—he’ll find me.”

6
    I n 1990, Jami Sherer was twenty-six years old, and she had made some terrible choices in her life. She was not perfect, but she was a loyal daughter and sister, a wonderful mother and a dependable and intelligent employee. Then something happened that gave her hope that she could divorce Steve and leave all the bad memories behind. Ironically, it was Steve himself who introduced her to the man who would be the catalyst for her leaving. Lew Adams* was no prize; like Steve, he was addicted to cocaine. Technically, he was married, but he was separated from his wife. He was certainly not a man a woman should base her hopes on, but to Jami he looked like a lifeline. She came to know Lew because he was one of the sources of Steve’s cocaine supply. Steve often suggested that Lew come home with him to make up a sexual threesome. He sometimes insisted that Lew spend the night on their living room couch. Steve even boasted to Lew that he enjoyed the idea of watching Jami with another man, but added that he would kill her if she ever cheated on him.
    When Lew met Jami Sherer, his heart melted. She was a dainty little thing with huge dark eyes and a tremulous smile. Although Steve treated her badly, she never fought back. Lew soon learned that Steve had a way of making people do what he wanted. He wanted to see Jami again, but not with Steve anywhere around. Lew certainly wasn’t in a position to offer her anything but a shoulder to cry on and an understanding ear, but he called Jami