Empty Promises

Brenneman promised to present a witness who would recall Steve Sherer’s description of Jami’s fall down a flight of stairs and her death.
    There was a suitcase and the jury would see “items in the suitcase that are all that is left of the life of Jami Sherer.”
    Sherer, Brenneman pointed out, didn’t participate in the search for his missing wife, began dating other women two weeks after she vanished, cashed in her stock options, and spent her vacation and sick-leave pay.
    “Jami Sherer vanished without a trace,” Brenneman said. “She left behind a loving family. She left behind her friends. She left behind all her worldly possessions. And she left behind her most precious possession of all, her two-year-old son, Chris.”
    Steve Sherer rested his head on his hand, and shook his head from time to time as Brenneman spoke. Other than that, he showed no emotion at all.
    Pete Mair, a onetime football star, rose to give the defense’s opening statement, favoring knees damaged by his gridiron days. His attitude was deprecating, and he stopped just short of being amused that the state would bring such a “flimsy” case into court.
    Mair didn’t deny that his client’s marriage had been stormy and that he had once pulled out a clump of Jami Sherer’s hair during an argument. “You may not like him,” Mair told the jurors, “but proving a first-degree murder case is a big jump. At the end of this case, we’ll be where we were in 1990—with an unsolved mystery, as unpleasant as it is.”
    Mair said there was not even conclusive evidence that Jami was dead, although he allowed that she probably was. “Proof,” he reminded the jurors, “has to be beyond a reasonable doubt.”
    Mair characterized Steve Sherer as an innocent widower being falsely accused, even badgered, by detectives whose investigation was based on the recent memories of a cast of shady characters, one of whom might even be the real killer.
    And it was certainly true enough that the prosecution’s roster of witnesses contained characters whose own histories were not stellar. Brenneman, Corscadden, and Richardson knew that. But Steve Sherer was a man whose life revolved around drugs and sex, and he interacted with people with similar interests.
    The previous Halloween, Steve had sent his son Chris a card from jail, perhaps the most honest communication he ever had with his son: “You have my bad blood in you. Don’t do drugs and alcohol. They’ve ruined my life…. But you have your mother’s blood, too. I’ll be watching you.”
    Lew Adams took the stand on May 11. He was one of the witnesses the gallery was most curious about, the man who had spent the last night of Jami Sherer’s life with her on that Saturday, September 29, 1990, at the Crest Motel. He was thin and tightly wired, wearing a long-sleeved silk shirt with a bright pattern. He had dark circles under his eyes.
    As Marilyn Brenneman questioned him, Adams almost vibrated with tension.
    “When did you learn that Jami Sherer was missing?”
    “Early on Monday morning. I was sleeping, and my mother woke me up and said Jami was missing, and then she said, ‘What’s going on? Who is this Jami?’ ”
    Lew Adams admitted that he had spent Saturday, September 29, with Jami. “I had no intentions toward her. She was beautiful—a special lady. We both had problems in our marriages.”
    Tears streamed down Adams’s face and choked his voice as he berated himself, still, for letting Jami go home to an angry husband.
    Mair grilled Adams hard, but the witness insisted he would never hurt a woman. Yes, he’d fought once with his wife, and they’d thrown food at each other. Yes, he had dealt drugs and used drugs.
    Lew Adams’s ex-wife took the stand. She recalled that fight. It was in September 1997. Lew had kicked at her and pushed her down, even smeared his lunch in her face, but she had spit in it, she admitted.
    The defense maintained that Dru Adams had told police that Lew told her during that fight, “I’ve killed before. I can kill again.” Dru, who had known Lew longer than anybody, said that “he wouldn’t have the guts to hurt anyone. If he did have the guts to hurt anyone, he would have hurt me—and I’m still here.”
    It was obvious that Dru Adams no longer cared for Lew, but just as obvious that she hadn’t left him because he was violent or abusive. She was embarrassed to have been dragged into the trial, and she left the courtroom hurriedly.
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