Empty Promises

deep that it rarely gives up its secrets.
    And then the winter storms roared in and made any further searches impossible until the spring came again.
    It was Christmas 1998. The Hagels had spent nine Christmases without Jami and without closure.

14
    J udge Robert Lasnik was appointed to the Washington State Supreme Court, and Superior Court Judge Bill Downing took over as the inquiry judge in the matter of Steve Sherer. Steve was fully aware now that the IJ was hearing witnesses for the second time. He scoffed to friends, “I don’t know why they keep looking for Jami—there’s nothing to find.”
    Steve finished his eight-month jail sentence on May 24, 1999. He knew who his enemies were, and his rage erupted within a short time. Incensed by Lieutenant Jim Taylor and Marilyn Brenneman’s unrelenting investigation of his life, Sherer made three incredibly stupid phone calls. Taylor had given Steve his business card eighteen months before, and for some reason, he’d kept it in his wallet ever since.
    His first call was to Taylor: “Hey, Lieutenant Dickhead,” Steve snarled. “Now that I’m out, why don’t you come fuck with me now, you piece of shit,” and he hung up.
    He called back: “I want you to stop messing with me. If you don’t have [the investigators] back off, I’m going to go out and cut someone’s fucking throat.”
    Taylor signaled frantically to Greg Mains to come to his desk and gestured for him to write down what he was saying. He had no recording device on his phone, so Taylor deliberately repeated everything Steve was saying to him. “What you’re telling me, Mr. Sherer,” Taylor said calmly, “is that if I don’t have my detectives back off, you’re going to go out and cut somebody’s fucking throat? Is that right?” Greg Mains wrote down the whole call, just as Taylor was repeating it. There was a click and the line went dead.
    Marilyn Brenneman wasn’t in her office when Steve called her, so he left a message on her answering machine: “This is Steve Sherer. I’m out now and I want to talk to you. You better call me back. I want what’s mine. I want my wife’s car back. I want her ring back. I want it all back. I’m not gonna go away. You better not fuck with me. It’s my turn to fuck with you. You’d better call me back.” There was a short pause and then he said, “Have a good life.”
    When she listened to the message, Brenneman doubted that he meant the last part of his message, but she believed the first part absolutely.
    Sherer had just committed a felony: Threatening a public official with bodily harm is against the law. He had been more explicit with Jim Taylor, however. Steve had been out of jail less than a month, and he was about to go back in. On June 23, 1999, he was arrested by King County sheriff’s deputies. Seattle District Court Judge Eileen Kato set his bail at $30,000, cash only.
    Steve told the judge he had no money for bail. He asked to be released so he could make a court appearance in Wenatchee, Washington, where he had posted $6,100 bail for traffic violations. His protestations were to no avail.
    The court record was sealed. The public knew only that Steve had been arrested for allegedly threatening a Redmond police officer and a King County senior deputy prosecutor whose names were not given.
    Eventually, Steve’s family came up with his bail and he was free again. He moved into his mother’s Mill Creek home.
    Jim Taylor and Marilyn Brenneman had bigger fish to fry than the threat charges. The inquiry judge had finally decided that there was indeed enough evidence to make the reasonable assumption that a crime had been committed: the murder of Jami Sherer. They had a massive amount of circumstantial evidence, dozens of witnesses, and the “autopsy” of Steve Sherer that Jim Taylor had sent Greg Mains and Mike Faddis out to create.
    Beginning in early January 2000, Redmond detectives and the FBI worked a round-the-clock stakeout of Sherri Schielke’s Mill Creek home and Steve’s usual haunts. Steve must have felt the net ready to drop over him. Armed with an arrest warrant, Greg Mains and Mike Faddis waited on Friday morning, January 7, at the office of Steve’s probation officer in Lynnwood, but Steve did not show up for his appointment. For the next twenty-four hours, the Redmond investigators searched the area around the Schielkes’ Mill Creek home without spotting Steve. All local police agencies were asked to have their