Empty Promises

the car, so she invited Steve to stay the night. He refused, took his two-year-old son and left.
    Judy still hadn’t heard from Jami and she was beginning to feel very anxious. “About nine or nine-thirty,” Judy recalled, “the phone rang and it was Steve. He said, ‘I can’t stay here. Can I come back?’ I said, ‘Yes. Bring Chris.’ ”
    By ten o’clock her grandson was asleep at her house, and Judy turned to Steve, determined to get some answers. She asked him what he’d done that afternoon and he told her he’d stayed at home until two o’clock and then gone over to his mother’s house and fallen asleep. He hadn’t heard from Jami all day. Steve explained that his mother and stepfather were away on vacation in Cancún, Mexico, and he’d promised to stay there part of the time, check on the mail, and generally keep an eye on their home to give them a break. She thought that was peculiar; Judy knew that Sherri Schielke invariably turned to her daughters, Laura and Saundra, to look after things while she was away. As far as Judy knew, Steve didn’t even have a key to Sherri and her third husband Wally’s home in Mill Creek. But Steve was insistent that this time he had been asked to stop by.
    The next morning, Steve was up at six and announced that he was going over to his mother’s house again to see if Jami had shown up there. Judy stared at him. Why in the world would Jami go to Sherri’s house? Even if she had gone there, she would have seen Steve’s car in the driveway and left to avoid a confrontation. If she was going anywhere, she would have come home to her family, or she would have gone to Lisa’s or some other girlfriend’s.
    Steve called a little while later from his mother’s home and said Jami wasn’t there.
    “I started calling Microsoft about seven-thirty A.M. ,” Judy Hagel said. “I started calling her office and then started getting scared. Up until then, I wasn’t as scared. I was calling Microsoft and she never answered the phone.”
    By then Judy was beginning to panic, and she did something that was out of character for her. She hadn’t heard from Jami since she said she was on her way home with tacos for everyone. That had been twenty hours ago . “I thought about [Lew Adams and his wife] and Costco. So I called Costco and asked for Lew’s wife. I didn’t quite know what I was going to say to her, but I had to know what was going on. The first time she answered the phone, I told her I was Steve’s mother, because I knew she didn’t know me. She said, ‘I have nothing to say to you.’ ”
    That struck Judy as odd. Why would Lew’s wife be angry with Steve or with his mother?
    “Then I called back,” Judy said. “I’m sorry, but this is who I am. I’m Jami Sherer’s mother. Your husband was with my daughter last night, and I need to know if they’re still together.”
    Dru Adams said she knew that Lew had come home early in the morning and had gone to work. He was just getting off his shift.
    “Where is she? Where is my daughter?” Judy asked desperately.
    “I know nothing about this,” Dru Adams said and hung up.
    Moments later Judy’s phone rang. It was Lew Adams, and he sounded distraught. “What do you mean, Jami’s not there?”
    “She’s not here,” Judy said, “and she’s not home either.”
    “I told her not to go home,” he said. “She was so scared to go home, and I told her, ‘Don’t go home.’ I kept telling her not to go home.”
    Judy didn’t know what to think, but she had a feeling that something terrible had happened to Jami. She kept hearing Jami’s voice saying, “I’m on my way. I’ll be there.” And underneath that, although Judy tried not to remember, she kept hearing Jami say, “All he can do is kill me.”

7
    O n Monday , October 1, 1990, Judy Hagel could wait no longer. She called the Redmond Police Department and reported Jami as a missing person. It really should have been Steve’s place to do that, but he hadn’t mentioned doing it. When Steve came back from his mother’s house, he agreed to go with Judy to the police station to make a formal complaint. The two rode in his car, a 1987 Blazer. The rig was in terrible shape, with both doors smashed from wrecks. Its dents and holes were patched with Bondo and the interior was awash with junk and crumpled wrappers. It was filthy and muddy. But that day, Judy Hagel didn’t notice anything different about Steve’s vehicle. It was always like