Empty Promises

at Microsoft, and she was touched that he had. He felt sorry for Jami. He listened to her and told her she didn’t deserve Steve’s abuse.
    Lew was a few years older than Steve, five feet ten, and a slender 160 pounds. He was handsome enough, but in a dissipated, tight-wired way that reflected his addiction. Lew had graduated from high school in 1978, but his recall of the eighties was only a drugged blur. He took a job with Costco, the huge warehouse-store chain based in Washington State. Later he transferred to a new branch that opened in California as the company boomed. But when the company cut back its work force, Lew was one of the first to go.
    He later admitted that his cocaine use was out of control. He dealt from an ounce to five or six ounces at a time in order to supply his own needs. He snorted enough, however, to damage his nasal membranes. Concerned, he had gone to a doctor who told him, “I can’t help you. You have to help yourself.”
    Lew did himself little good; all he did was switch to freebasing crack cocaine. His dealing was a penny-ante operation: He took buyers’ money, bought some crack, kept a little, and gave the rest to his buyers. During those years, he married a pretty young woman, Dru Adams,* who worked for the warehouse stores, and they had two children. “I stole to support my habit,” he admitted, “and to support my family. I didn’t get caught every time I stole.”
    By 1990, Lew Adams was separated from his wife and living with his parents in the north end of Seattle. He had a job with a local Chevrolet dealer where he repaired used cars that were turned in for new models. He continued to sell cocaine, and Steve Sherer was one of his customers. There were parallels certainly between Steve Sherer and Lew Adams, but there were just as many areas where they differed: Lew had a conscience, no matter how deep he tried to bury it. Lew also respected women, and he did not believe in mistreating them.
    His fledgling relationship with Jami was no storybook romance. How could it be? Steve was orchestrating the whole thing. Steve even urged Lew to make the first call to Jami at work, although she didn’t know it. Steve had decided that Lew would be part of their first threesome.
    Jami was drowning, starving, and struggling to be free of Steve. In her desperation, she perceived a great deal more in Lew Adams than he was able to provide. He was as embarrassed by Steve’s sexual scenarios as Jami was.
    Meanwhile, by September 1990, Jami’s friends at Microsoft saw a change in her. For the first time in a long time, she seemed optimistic as she told them she’d met a man who really seemed to care about her. She was like a schoolgirl when she talked about Lew, and even though they could see trouble ahead, her friends were so glad to see Jami smile again that they didn’t have the heart to tell her to slow down. Surely she didn’t have to be reminded that there would be trouble if Steve found out. They had no inkling that Steve had set it all up.
    Lew and Jami spoke on the phone a few times during the final days of the month. They met on Thursday, September 27, and Jami confided to several friends that she was going to see him alone on the weekend. On Friday, Jami told Brenda Yamamoto that she was so happy—she was going to meet Lew on Saturday.
    Kay Eck, who always felt like a kind of mother figure to Jami at Microsoft, recalled talking with her that week. “She put on a good front,” Kay said, “[but] she felt like someone was stalking her for a few weeks…. She had hang-up phone calls. But she was so happy on Friday [September 28]—like a weight was lifted from her shoulders.”
    That bright and sunny final week of September 1990 stood out in many people’s minds. Lisa Cryder recalled it well. She and Jami had been friends since they were little girls playing in front of their houses in Bellevue, and they’d ridden horses together. “Then in the middle of the eighth grade,” Lisa said, “my mother got remarried. Jami was an eastside kid and we moved across Lake Washington to Seattle, but we stayed friends.”
    Lisa and Jami became really close again as adults when they gave birth to their babies only nine months apart. They got together to do fun things with their infants. At first, Lisa was surprised at Jami’s changed physical appearance, but she soon realized that she was the same Jami underneath. Lisa’s reaction to Steve, however, was similar to that of