Empty Promises

three months of Jami’s death,” Kristin Richardson said. “Does that change your opinion?”
    “No. He was upset and concerned.”
    The defense now attempted to enter into evidence the videotape of Jami having sex with both Lew Adams and Steve Sherer. Moreover, they wanted to show it to the jury. Their client had been painted with a black brush by witness after witness. Now they wanted to erase Jami’s image as a good mother and a loving daughter and show her as a wanton woman.
    But it seemed like such a vicious thing to do. How would the jury react to such a move, and how would Jami’s mother and father cope with it? For days, the rumor that the tape was going to be allowed circulated through the courtroom. A number of court watchers vowed to leave the courtroom if the video was shown. At that, it might be a horrendous tactical error on the part of Mair and Camiel; the video reportedly showed their client directing sex play between his drugged wife and another man. That might not endear him to the jury.
    In the end, Judge Wartnik refused to allow it, and there were sighs of relief.
    Pete Mair read Steve Sherer’s suicide note, the note he had beside him in his car when he attempted suicide shortly after Jami vanished. The prosecution argued that the suicide was staged, and that Sherer had never intended to die. If he had, why did he have his cell phone so conveniently beside him?
    One of the defense’s prize witnesses backfired badly on them. Perhaps Mair and Camiel didn’t fully grasp the techniques used in bloodhound searches. They had interviewed Richard Schurman, Maggie’s handler, and knew she and other dogs had followed a track from Jami’s abandoned Mazda to the bus stop on I-5. Perhaps Peter Camiel’s intention was to show that a stranger had dumped her car near the church and then caught a bus.
    By the time Schurman finished explaining how the scent objects obtained from the Sherers’ laundry hamper led the dogs to the last spot where their quarry stood, however, the defense had clearly experienced a disaster.
    It was clear that the skin flakes and odor on the back of the driver’s seat were not from Jami. Add to that the fact that the seat had been pushed too far back for Jami to reach the accelerator and brake, and any reasonable person would infer that Jami didn’t drive her car to the church lot.
    But the dogs had picked up on a scent, and that scent was from Steve Sherer’s clothing, which had touched Jami’s in the hamper. That was the scent they got off the headrest of the driver’s seat and from the hamper. Both Maggie and the second team of bloodhounds had proven that it was Steve Sherer who parked his missing wife’s car sometime on Sunday afternoon, September 30, and then walked or jogged to the bus stop.
    It was impossible now for Camiel to deconstruct his own witness; he had spent a long time proving that Schurman was an expert in his field when he brought him to the stand.
    “The dogs pursued the male scent,” Schurman explained once more, “because the female scent had been eliminated the first day.”
    The male scent was that of Steven Sherer.

    Sharon Ann “Sherri” Schielke took the stand. She was very attractive, with soft dark hair worn in a pageboy with feathered bangs. She had perfect features, and, like her missing daughter-in-law, she was very petite.
    Sherri explained how she had helped Jami and Steve buy their home on May 31, 1990. She said she had never seen the shattered window beside her front door, so she had no personal knowledge that it had been broken on Sunday, September 30. “I saw fresh putty around the glass around New Year’s 1990.”
    “Did you get some Missing posters of Jami?”
    “Yes, Carolyn Willoughby gave them to me, and then Steve had some.”
    “How many?” Mair asked.
    “A stack about that high.” She held her hands about a foot apart. “I have about twenty left. Carolyn and I and my daughters left them along the Bothell Highway and in Lynnwood.”
    Sherri admitted that she had never seen Steve take any to distribute. She had heard that Jami was missing when she was in Cancún on Sunday morning.
    Mair asked Sherri to explain the arrangement she had with Steve to be in her house that Sunday.
    “Well, I paid the mortgage, and they paid me back on the first of the month. On the twenty-ninth Steve was going to bring me a check—”
    “Objection,” Hank Corscadden interrupted. “Hear-say.”
    Corscadden’s style was very