Empty Promises

obviously drugged, with Steve Sherer playing director and producer. The Redmond detectives had seen it all, but they were disgusted by the flickering images, the sickening desecration of a man’s marital vows to cherish his wife.
    Days went by, but the search parties didn’t let up, despite the sometimes fierce rain and windstorms that buffeted the north end. It was terrible to think of Jami out there in the icy cold, alone, and it was inconceivable that she would not have called to see if Chris was okay. “Chris was her life,” her friends said often. “He was the most important thing in the world to her.”
    Jami had no car, and she hadn’t cashed her last pay-check for just over $500. Her normal habit was to deposit her check in Key Bank on the day she got it. This time, she had not. Nor did they find any other bank accounts that she might have maintained secretly to have running-away money.
    Meanwhile, Lew Adams was rapidly becoming a basket case. He felt tremendous guilt because he had been unable to talk Jami out of going back to Steve’s house. He regretted that he hadn’t been more forceful in convincing her that she was in danger.
    Of course Lew had a second worry. He had been with Jami at the Crest Motel the night before she disappeared. He knew he had to be a prime suspect in whatever had happened to her, and he had his own secrets. He was a grown man, still married but living with his parents, and he was involved in the drug world. When Lew was interviewed again on October 8, he said he had known Steve for ten years and been a cocaine source for him in the early 1980s, before Steve moved to Palm Desert. “I met Steve through his cousin,” Lew said. “I ran into the cousin again about eight months ago, and he put me back in touch with Steve.”
    Lew described the last day he had spent with Jami—Saturday, September 29, 1990. They had met at noon at Alley Chevrolet, where Lew worked. Jami parked her car down the street on Lake City Way and joined him in his classic 1959 Volkswagen Bug, which he had painted neon pink. That car was his most prized possession. He and Jami went to the Omnidome to see a movie about the eruption of Mount St. Helens, but the special effects made Jami dizzy.
    They went next to a restaurant for a late lunch and sat at an outdoor table, drinking beer and talking. Lew, sensing that Jami was eager for someone to listen to her, just sat quietly and listened. She was such a sad woman, and so trapped in her marriage, but he could see a little sparkle in her. He wondered what she had been like before she met Steve, and he was sorry that she ever had. There was really nothing Lew could do to help her, except listen to her and warn her to be careful.
    It was a good Saturday, with the first sense of true autumn in the air, and they watched the sun go down over Elliott Bay. Jami called her mother to check on Chris, and then called her friend Lisa to cover herself with an alibi, in case Steve started looking for her. Then she and Lew went to a pizza place for dinner, where they drank more beer.
    They had, Lew admitted, decided to spend the night together at the Crest Motel. He was adamant that they used no drugs at all. This time they didn’t have Steve with a video camera aimed at them, calling directions and suggestions.
    They parted company at about seven the next morning, after stopping for apple juice. Lew liked Jami and felt sorry for her. He said again how fearful he had been for her when he dropped her off at her car, advising her to go to her mother’s house and not to her own. Then he headed home to his parents’ house.
    “That was the last time I ever saw or heard from her.”
    Jami had promised Lew that she would go to her mother’s house and stay there. She would call an attorney about a divorce or separation on Monday morning.
    Interviewed again the next night in the Redmond police station, Lew said he felt personally responsible for Jami’s absence. “If I hadn’t become involved with her, she wouldn’t be missing.”
    “Do you have any idea where she is now?” one of the investigators asked.
    “In heaven,” he said, with a sigh. “I don’t know.”
    Was that a confession? Or was it only an utterance from a man who felt tremendous guilt for contributing to the death of a woman simply by being out all night with her? Lew Adams seemed to be genuinely remorseful, but then, a lot of killers appear the same way.
    He went through Sunday with the detectives