Waiting to Be Heard: A Memoir (10 page)

Chapter 10

November 5, 2007, Day Four

P
olice officer Rita Ficarra slapped her palm against the back of my head, but the shock of the blow, even more than the force, left me dazed. I hadn’t expected to be slapped. I was turning around to yell, “Stop!”—my mouth halfway open—but before I even realized what had happened, I felt another whack, this one above my ear. She was right next to me, leaning over me, her voice as hard as her hand had been. “Stop lying, stop lying,” she insisted.

Stunned, I cried out, “Why are you hitting me?”

“To get your attention,” she said.

I have no idea how many cops were stuffed into the cramped, narrow room. Sometimes there were two, sometimes eight—police coming in and going out, always closing the door behind them. They loomed over me, each yelling the same thing: “You need to remember. You’re lying. Stop lying!”

“I’m telling the truth,” I insisted. “I’m not lying.” I felt like I was suffocating. There was no way out. And still they kept yelling, insinuating.

The authorities I trusted thought I was a liar. But I wasn’t lying. I was using the little energy I still had to show them I was telling the truth. Yet I couldn’t get them to believe me.

We weren’t even close to being on equal planes. I was twenty, and I barely spoke their language. Not only did they know the law, but it was their job to manipulate people, to get “criminals” to admit they’d done something wrong by bullying, by intimidation, by humiliation. They try to scare people, to coerce them, to make them frantic. That’s what they do. I was in their interrogation room. I was surrounded by police officers. I was alone.

No one read me my rights. I had no idea that I could remain silent. I was sure you had to prove your innocence by talking. If you didn’t, it must mean you were hiding something.

I began to trust them even more than I trusted myself. So much pressure was being exerted on me that I couldn’t think through what was happening. I was losing my sense of reality. I would have believed, and said, anything to end the torment I was in.

T
hat Monday morning, Meredith’s autopsy report was splashed across the British tabloids depicting a merciless, hellish end to her life. The fatal stabbing, the coroner said, had been done with a pocketknife, and skin and hair found beneath Meredith’s fingernails showed she was locked in a vicious to-the-death struggle with her killer. Mysteriously, news accounts reported that something in the same report had made the police bring Filomena, Laura, and me back to the villa. To this day I don’t know what it was.

There was evidence that Meredith had been penetrated, but none that proved there had been an actual rape. But other clues that would lead the police to the murderer had been left behind. There was a bloody handprint smeared on the wall and a bloody shoeprint on the floor. A blood-soaked handkerchief was lying in the street nearby. As the stories mounted, I was the only one of Meredith’s three housemates being mentioned consistently by name: “Amanda Knox, an American,” “Amanda Knox, fellow exchange student,” “Amanda Knox, Meredith’s American flatmate.” It was all going horribly wrong.

But by that time I wasn’t paying attention to the news.

I was desperate to get back to my regular routine, an almost impossible quest given that any minute I expected the police to call again. I didn’t have a place of my own to live or clean clothes to wear. But trying to be adult in an unmanageable situation, I borrowed Raffaele’s sweatpants and walked nervously to my 9
A.M.
grammar class. It was the first time since Meredith’s body was found that I’d been out alone.

Class wasn’t as normal as I would have liked. Just before we began the day’s lesson, a classmate raised her hand and asked, “Can we talk about the murder that happened over the weekend?”

I knew I hadn’t been singled out, but that’s the way it felt. I said, “Can we not? She was my housemate, and the police have asked me not to say anything.” The other students murmured vague sympathies, but the attention put me even more on edge.

When my phone rang I drew in my breath, exhaling only after I realized it was Dolly. “Have you reached the American embassy?” she asked.

“No,” I said, stepping into the hall. “I haven’t had time, but I’ll try to figure it out. I’m back in class.”

In truth, I hadn’t even thought about calling the embassy.

As with everyone who’d phoned, I wanted Dolly to believe that I had my life under control. I was still trying to believe it myself.

In retrospect I understand that Dolly had a hunch I was headed for a train wreck—that in keeping me awake, calling me back in, the police were interested in me as more than just a “person informed of the facts.” I didn’t see these things as I should have, as foreshadowing, or that Dolly’s advice was now my last chance to alter the course of coming events. I just viewed her suggestions as moral support, like other calls I was getting from my family and friends.

She said, “You’re a strong girl. I love you. Your mom’s going to be there tomorrow, so stay tough.”

When class ended I headed back toward Raffaele’s apartment. As I walked through Piazza Grimana, I saw Patrick standing in a crowd of students and journalists in front of the University for Foreigners administration building. He kissed me hello on both cheeks. “Do you want to talk to some BBC reporters?” he asked. “They’re looking for English-speaking students to interview.”

I said, “I can’t. The police have told me not to talk to anyone about the case.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to put you in a difficult position,” he said.

“That’s okay. But Patrick . . .” I hesitated. “I’ve needed to call you. I don’t think I can work at Le Chic anymore. I’m too afraid to go out by myself at night now. I keep looking behind me to see if I’m being followed. And I feel like someone is lurking behind every building, watching me.”

“No problem. I completely understand. Don’t worry about it.”

“Thank you.”

We kissed again on each cheek. “
Ciao
,” I said.

That afternoon at Raffaele’s, I got a text from one of Meredith’s friends—a student from Poland—telling me about a candlelight memorial service for Meredith that night. Everyone was supposed to meet downtown, on Corso Vannucci, at 8
P.M.
and walk in a procession to the Duomo. I kept wondering about what I should do. I wanted to be there but couldn’t decide if it was a good idea for me to go to such a public event. I was sure the people I ran into would ask me what I knew about the murder. In the end my decision was made for me—Raffaele had somewhere else to be, and I wouldn’t have considered going alone. It didn’t occur to me that people would later read my absence as another indication of guilt.

At around 9
P.M.
Raffaele and I went to a neighbor’s apartment for a late dinner. Miserable and unable to sit still, I plucked absentmindedly at his friend’s ukulele, propped on a shelf in the living room. At about ten o’clock, while we were eating, Raffaele’s phone rang. “
Pronto
,” Raffaele said, picking up.

It was the police saying they needed him to come to the
questura
immediately. Raffaele and I had the same thought:
This late? Not again.

Raffaele said, “We’re just eating dinner. Would you mind if I finished first?”

That was a bad idea, too.

While we cleared the table, Raffaele and I chatted quickly about what I should do while he was at the police station. I was terrified to be alone, even at his place, and uneasy about hanging out with someone I didn’t know. I could quickly organize myself to stay overnight with Laura or Filomena, but that seemed so complicated—and unnecessary. Tomorrow, when my mom arrived, this wouldn’t be a question we’d have to discuss.

“I’m sure it’s going to be quick,” Raffaele said.

I said, “I’ll just come with you.”

Did the police know I’d show up, or were they purposefully separating Raffaele and me? When we got there they said I couldn’t come inside, that I’d have to wait for Raffaele in the car. I begged them to change their minds. I said, “I’m afraid to be by myself in the dark.”

They gave me a chair outside the waiting room, by the elevator. I’d been doing drills in my grammar workbook for a few minutes when a silver-haired police officer—I never learned his name—came and sat next to me. He said, “As long as you’re here, do you mind if I ask you some questions?”

I was still clueless, still thinking I was helping the police, still unable or unwilling to recognize that I was a suspect. But as the next hours unfolded, I slowly came to understand that the police were trying to get something out of me, that they wouldn’t stop until they had it.

To the unnamed police officer, I said, “Okay, but I’ve told you everything I know. I don’t know what else to say.”

“Why don’t you keep talking about the people who’ve been in your house—especially men?” he suggested.

I’d done this so many times in the
questura
I felt as if I could dial it in. And finally someone there seemed nice. “Okay,” I said, starting in. “There are the guys who live downstairs.”

As I was running through the list of male callers at No. 7, Via della Pergola, I suddenly remembered Rudy Guede for the first time. I’d met him only briefly. I said, “Oh, and there’s this guy—I don’t know his name or his number—all I know is that he plays basketball with the guys downstairs. They introduced Meredith and me to him in Piazza IV Novembre. We all walked to the villa together, and then Meredith and I went to their apartment for a few minutes.”

While we talked, I got up to stretch. I’d been sitting hunched over a long time. I touched my toes, flexed my quads, extended my arms overhead.

He said, “You seem really flexible.”

I replied, “I used to do a lot of yoga.”

He said, “Can you show me? What else can you do?”

I took a few steps toward the elevator and did a split. It felt good to know I still could.

While I was on the floor, legs splayed, the elevator doors opened. Rita Ficarra, the cop who had reprimanded Raffaele and me about kissing the day before, stepped out.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, her voice full of contempt.

I stood up and returned to my chair. “Waiting,” I said.

The silver-haired officer said, “I was just asking Amanda some questions.”

Ficarra said, “If that’s the case, we need to put it on the record.”

She led me through the waiting room and into the same office with the two desks where I’d spent so much time. As we were walking, she looked at me, narrowing her eyes. “You said you guys don’t smoke marijuana. Are you sure you’re being honest?”

“I’m really sorry I said that.” I grimaced. “I was afraid to tell you that all of us smoked marijuana occasionally, including Meredith. We’d sometimes pass a joint around when we were chilling out with the guys or with Filomena and Laura. But Meredith and I never bought any pot; we didn’t know any drug dealers.”

She shut the door and signaled for me to sit down on a metal folding chair, taking the seat across the desk from me. The silver-haired officer pulled up a chair next to me, effectively cutting the room in half. The light was bright. The walls were blank. I had nowhere to look but at the police. They said, “We’re going to call in an interpreter.”

While we waited for the interpreter to arrive, they said, “Tell us more about the last time you saw Meredith.”

I did.

Then they said, “Okay, minute by minute, we want you to tell us what happened.”

I still thought they were using me to find out more information about Meredith—her habits, whom she knew, who could possibly have had a motive to kill her. I started trying to describe the exact time I saw Meredith leave the house. I said, “I think it was around two
P.M.
—one or two. I’m not sure which. I don’t wear a watch, and the time didn’t matter—it was a holiday. But I know it was after lunch.”

Then the questions shifted. They asked, “When did you leave your house?”

At first, when they started questioning me about what I did, I thought they were just trying to test whether I was telling the truth—maybe because I’d lied about our marijuana use.

I said, “Before dinner—four-ish maybe.”

They said, “Are you sure it was four-ish? Was it four o’clock or five o’clock? You didn’t see the time?”

“No. Then we went to Raffaele’s place.”

“How long it did it take you to get there?”

“I don’t know—a couple of minutes. He doesn’t live far away.”

“What happened then?”

“Nothing happened. We had dinner; we watched a movie; we smoked a joint; we had sex; we went to bed.”

“Are you positive? Nothing else?”

“Well, I got a text message from my boss telling me I didn’t have to work that night.”

“What time did that happen?”

“I think around eight
P.M.
—maybe. Maybe it was before then.” I was thinking,
It had to be before I’d normally go to work.
“Maybe seven or eight?”

That wasn’t good enough for them.

They kept asking me for exact times, and because I couldn’t remember what had happened from 7
P.M.
to 8
P.M.
and 8
P.M.
to 9
P.M.
they made it seem as if my memory were wrong. I started second-guessing myself. Raffaele and I had done some variation of watching a movie, cooking dinner, reading
Harry Potter
, smoking a joint, and having sex every night for the past week. Suddenly it all ran together so that I couldn’t remember what time we’d done what on Thursday, November 1. I kept saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

I was afraid to say that I didn’t know the difference between 7
P.M.
or 8
P.M.
, and I was beginning to feel panicky because they were demanding that I know. My heart was hammering, my thoughts were scrambled, and the pressure on the sides of my head made it feel as if my skull were going to split apart. I couldn’t think. Suddenly, in trying to distinguish between this time or that time, this sequence of events or that one, I started forgetting everything. My mind was spinning. I felt as if I were going totally blank.