Waiting to Be Heard: A Memoir (6 page)

A
ll Saints’ Day, on November 1, is a national holiday in Italy, a day to honor the dead. Except for church bells ringing, Perugia was quiet that Thursday morning. Everyone my age must have been sleeping off the night before. I was happy for the solitude when I left Raffaele’s for a few hours on my own at home.

Around noon, I was sitting at the kitchen table reading when Filomena and her boyfriend, Marco, stopped by to change clothes for a party. She was in a rush as she chatted with me through her open bedroom door.

“How are you?” she asked. “Where’s Meredith?”

“I’m good,” I said. “Just waiting for Raffaele to come over for lunch. Meredith must still be asleep.”

Filomena and Marco left about an hour before Meredith wandered in from her room. She looked sleepy-eyed.

“You’ve still got vampire blood on your chin,” I told her.

“I know. I couldn’t get all the paint off,” she said. “I was so tired when I got home at five
A.M.
that I didn’t wash my face.”

“What did you end up doing last night?” I asked.

“I went to a dinner party. It was amazing. They filled a surgical glove with water and froze it to make an ice hand. It looked cool floating in the punch bowl. Then we all went dancing at Merlin’s”—Meredith’s favorite pub. “What about you?”

“My Halloween was lame. I thought it was fun seeing everyone’s costumes, but mostly I was bored.”

By the time Meredith got out of the shower, Raffaele was at our house. We were eating pasta when she came out of her room carrying an armload of dirty clothes to put in the washer in the big bathroom. She was wearing baggy boyfriend-style jeans.

“Dang, girl. Nice pants,” I said.

“Yeah, my ex-boyfriend bought them for me,” she said, hip-bumping me in response to my compliment. “What are you doing for the rest of the day?”

“Hanging out here for a while and then we’re going back to Raffaele’s,” I answered.

“Oh, cool. I’m heading out with friends, so have a good day.”

She grabbed her purse. “See you.
Ciao
,” she said, tossing the strap over her shoulder and waving as she went through the front door.

Raffaele and I were good at being low-key together. We chilled out in the common room and smoked a joint while I played Beatles songs on the guitar for an hour or so. Sometime between 4
P
.M.
and 5
P.M.,
we left to go to his place. We wanted a quiet, cozy night in. As we walked along, I was telling Raffaele that
Amélie
was my all-time favorite movie.

“Really?” he asked. “I’ve never seen it.”

“Oh my God,” I said, unbelieving. “You have to see it right this second! You’ll love it!”

Not long after we got back to Raffaele’s, his doorbell rang. It was a friend of his whom I’d never met—a pretty, put-together medical student named Jovanna Popovic, who spoke Italian so quickly I couldn’t understand her. She’d come to ask Raffaele for a favor. Her mother was putting a suitcase on a bus for her and she wondered if he could drive her to the station at midnight to pick it up.

“Sure,” Raffaele said.

As soon as she left, we downloaded the movie on his computer and sat on his bed to watch it. Around 8:30
P.M.
I suddenly remembered that it was Thursday, one of my regular workdays. Quickly checking my phone, I saw that Patrick had sent me a text telling me I didn’t have to come in. Since it was a holiday, he thought it would be a slow night.

“Okay,” I texted back. “
Ci vediamo più tardi buona serata!
”—“See you later. Have a good evening!” Then I turned off my phone, just in case he changed his mind and wanted me to come in after all. I was so excited to have the night off that I jumped on top of Raffaele, cheering, “Woo-hoo! Woo-hoo!”

Our good mood was only elevated when the doorbell rang again at 8:45
P.M
.: Jovanna had come back, this time to say that the suitcase hadn’t made the bus and that she didn’t need a ride after all. With no more obligations, we had the whole rest of the night just to be with each other and chill out.

After the movie ended, around 9:15
P.M
., we sautéed a piece of fish and made a simple salad. We were washing the dishes when we realized that the kitchen sink was leaking. Raffaele, who’d already had a plumber come once, was frustrated and frantically tried to mop up a lot of water with a little rag. He ended up leaving a puddle.

“I’ll bring the mop over from our house tomorrow. No big deal,” I said.

Raffaele sat down at his desk and rolled a joint, and I climbed into his lap to read aloud to him from another Harry Potter book, this one in German. I translated the parts he didn’t understand, as best I could, into Italian or English while we smoked and giggled.

Later, when we were in bed, our conversation wound its way to his mother. His dad had divorced her years before, but she’d never gotten over the break. In 2005 she had died suddenly. “Some people suspect she killed herself, but I’m positive she didn’t,” Raffaele said. “She would never do that. She had a bad heart, and it just gave out. It was horrible for me—we were really close—and I miss her all the time.”

I felt terrible for him, but it was hard for me to relate. The only person I knew who had died was my grandfather, when I was sixteen. I felt sad when my mom told me, but my grandfather had been old and sick, and we had expected his death for a few weeks.

I’m sure Mom and Oma must have cried, but my strongest memory is sitting around the dining room table telling funny stories about Opa. My grandmother’s message—that grieving was something you did in private; that you didn’t make public displays and you kept on moving forward—had remained with me.

Hearing the pain in Raffaele’s voice, I hurt for him. Nestling my head on his chest, I tried to be comforting.

As we started kissing, Raffaele gave me a hickey on my neck. We undressed the rest of the way, had sex, and fell asleep.

We’d known each other for exactly one week and had settled so quickly into an easy routine that one night seemed to melt happily and indistinguishably into the one that came after.

We planned to break our routine the next day, All Souls’ Day, by taking a long drive into the countryside, to the neighboring town of Gubbio. The November 2 holiday wasn’t usually observed with as much fanfare as All Saints’ Day, but since it fell on a Friday in 2007, a lot of people, including us, were turning it into a four-day weekend. I thought,
Italians having a good time again
. And I couldn’t wait.

Chapter 6

Morning, November 2, 2007, Day One

O
n that cold, sunny Friday morning, I left Raffaele asleep in his apartment and walked home to take a shower and get my things together, thinking about our romantic weekend in the Umbrian hills. In hindsight, it seems that arriving home to find the front door open should have rattled me more. I thought,
That’s strange
. But it was easily explained. The old latch didn’t catch unless we used a key.
Wind must have blown it open
, I thought, and walked inside the house calling out, “Filomena? Laura? Meredith? Hello? Hello? Anybody?”

Nobody. The bedroom doors were closed.

I wasn’t alarmed by two pea-size flecks of blood in the bathroom sink that Meredith and I shared. There was another smear on the faucet.
Weird
. I’d gotten my ears pierced. Were they bleeding? I scratched the droplets with my fingernail. They were dry
. Meredith must have nicked herself.

It wasn’t until I got out of the shower that I noticed a reddish-brown splotch about the size of an orange on the bathmat.
More blood.
Could Meredith have started her period and dripped? But then, how would it have gotten on the sink?
My confusion increased. We were usually so neat. I went to my room and, while putting on a white skirt and a blue sweater, thought about what to bring along on my trip to Gubbio with Raffaele.

I went to the big bathroom to use Filomena’s blow dryer and was stashing it back against the wall when I noticed poop in the toilet. No one in the house would have left the toilet unflushed.
Could there have been a stranger here?
Was someone in the house when I was in the shower?
I felt a lurch of panic and the prickly feeling you get when you think someone might be watching you. I quickly grabbed my purse and coat and somehow remembered the mop I said I’d bring back to Raffaele’s. I scrambled to push the key into the lock, making myself turn it before I ran up the driveway, my heart banging painfully.

By the time I was a block from home I was second-guessing myself. Maybe I was overreacting. Maybe there was a simple reason for the toilet being unflushed. I needed someone to say, “Amanda, you’re right to be scared. This isn’t normal.” And if it wasn’t okay, I wanted someone to tell me what to do. My skittering brain pulled up my mom’s mantra: when in doubt, call. Forgetting the nine-hour time difference between Perugia and Seattle, I pressed the number sequence for home. My mom did not say hello, just “Amanda, are you okay? What’s wrong?” It was in the middle of the night in Seattle, and she was worried.

“I’m on my way back to Raffaele’s,” I said, “but I just wanted to check in. I found some strange things in my house.” I explained my reasons for worrying. Then I asked, “What do you think I should do?”

“Call your roommates,” she said. “Go tell Raffaele, and call me right back.”

Hearing Mom’s voice calmed me.
It can’t be that bad
, I thought.
I’m out of the house. Nothing happened. I’m safe.
No one’s in danger.

I called Filomena first and was relieved when she picked up.

“
Ciao
, Amanda,” she said.

“
Ciao
,” I said. “I’m calling because when I came home from Raffaele’s this morning, our front door was open. I found a few drops of blood in one bathroom and shit in the other toilet. Do you know anything about it?”

“What do you mean?” she asked, her voice instantaneously on high alert. “I didn’t stay there last night—I was at Marco’s—and Laura’s in Rome on business. Have you talked to Meredith?”

“No, I tried you first,” I said.

“I’m at the fair outside town,” she said. “I just got here. Try Meredith, and then go back to the house. We need to see if anything was stolen.” She sounded worried.

I called Meredith on her British phone. A recording said it was out of service. That struck me as odd. Then I pulled up Meredith’s Italian number. It went straight to voice mail.

By that time, I was back at Raffaele’s. He was in total vacation mode: he’d slept in and had just gotten out of the shower. I’d forgotten about our trip. “Hey,” I said, trying to sound casual, “does this sound weird to you?” I told him what I’d seen.

“Yeah,” he said. “We should definitely go over and look around.”

Over a quick breakfast, Raffaele and I talked some more about what I’d seen. “Maybe the toilet is just broken,” he said.

Even before we’d downed the last sips of our coffee, Filomena called back. “What do you see?” she demanded. Her panic was retriggering my own.

“Filomena,” I said, as evenly as I could, “we’re just leaving Raffaele’s.”

Ten minutes later, when we reached the villa, my stomach was knotted with dread. “What if someone was in here?” I said, feeling increasingly creeped out. Raffaele held my free hand while I unlocked the door. I yelled, “Is anyone here?”

At first nothing seemed amiss. The house was quiet, and the kitchen/living area was immaculate. I poked my head in Laura’s room. It looked fine, too. Then I opened Filomena’s door. I gasped. The window had been shattered and glass was everywhere. Clothes were heaped all over the bed and floor. The drawers and cabinets were open. All I could see was chaos. “Oh my God, someone broke in!” I shouted to Raffaele, who was right behind me. In the next instant, I spotted Filomena’s laptop and digital camera sitting on the desk. I couldn’t get my head around it. “That’s so weird,” I said. “Her things are here. I don’t understand. What could have happened?”

Just then, my phone rang. It was Filomena. “Someone’s been in your room,” I said. “They smashed your window. But it’s bizarre—it doesn’t look like they took anything.”

“I’m coming home this second,” she said, her voice constricted.

Meredith’s door was still closed, just as it had been when I was home earlier. I called out, “Meredith.” She didn’t answer.
Could she have spent the night with Giacomo? Or with one of her British girlfriends?
Still, at that moment I was more worried about the smashed window in Filomena’s room than about Meredith’s closed door.

I ran outside and around the house to see if the guys downstairs were home and to see if they’d heard anything during the night. Outside, away from Raffaele, my anxiety soared. My heart started racing again. I pounded on their door and tried to peer through the glass. It looked like no one was home.

I ran back upstairs and knocked gently on Meredith’s door, calling, “Meredith. Are you in there?” No sound. I called again, louder. I knocked harder. Then I banged. I jiggled the handle. It was locked.
Meredith only locks her door when she’s changing clothes
, I thought
. She can’t be in there or she’d answer.
“Why isn’t she answering me?” I asked Raffaele frantically.

I couldn’t figure out, especially in that moment, why her door would be locked. What if she were inside? Why wouldn’t she respond if she were? Was she sleeping with her earphones in? Was she hurt? At that moment what mattered more than anything was reaching her just to know where she was, to know that she was okay.

I kneeled on the floor and squinted, trying to peer through the keyhole. I couldn’t see anything. And we had no way of knowing if the door had been locked from the inside or the outside.

“I’m going outside to see if I can look through her window from the terrace.”

I climbed over the wrought-iron railing. With my feet on the narrow ledge, I held on to the rail with one hand and leaned out as far as I could, my body at a forty-five-degree angle over the gravel walkway below. Raffaele came out and shouted, “Amanda! Get down. You could fall!”

That possibility hadn’t occurred to me.

“Please come in before you get hurt!”

As soon as we got inside, we went back to Meredith’s closed door. “I can try to kick it down,” Raffaele offered.

“Try it!”

He rammed the door with his shoulder, hard. Nothing. He kicked next to the handle. It didn’t budge.

I called my mom again. “Mom,” I said. “Someone broke into our house, and we can’t find Meredith. What should we do?”

“Amanda, call the police,” she said.

My stepfather, Chris, yelled into the speakerphone, “Amanda, get the hell out of the house, this instant!”

While I was talking to them, Raffaele called his sister to see what she thought. She was a police officer in Rome.

Raffaele dialed 112—Italy’s 911—for the Carabinieri, which was separate from—and more professional than—the Perugian town police.

As soon as he hung up, I said, “Let’s wait for them outside.” Even without Chris’s insistence, I was too spooked to be in the house. On the way out I glanced from the kitchen into the larger bathroom. The toilet had been flushed. “Oh my God!” I said to Raffaele. “Someone must have been hiding inside when I was here the first time—or they came back while I was gone!”

We ran out and waited on a grassy bank beside the driveway. I was shivering from nerves and cold, and Raffaele was hugging me to calm me down and keep me warm, when a man in jeans and a brown jacket walked up. As he approached us he said he was from the police. I thought,
That was fast
.

Another officer joined him. I tried to explain in Italian that there had been a break-in and that we hadn’t been able to find one of our roommates, Meredith. With Raffaele translating both sides, I gradually understood that these officers were just Postal Police, the squad that deals with tech crimes.

“Two cell phones were turned in to us this morning,” one said. “One is registered to Filomena Romanelli. Do you know her?”

“Yes, she’s my housemate,” I said. “It can’t be Filomena’s, because I just talked to her. But I’ve been trying to reach my other roommate, Meredith, all morning. She doesn’t answer. Who turned these in? Where did they find them?”

Later I found out that a neighbor had heard the phones ringing in her garden when I’d tried to call Meredith. They’d been tossed over the high wall that protected the neighbor’s house from the street—and from intruders. But the Postal Police wouldn’t explain or answer my questions.

We went inside, and I wrote out Meredith’s phone numbers on a Post-it Note for them. While we were talking, we heard a car drive up. It was Filomena’s boyfriend, Marco Z., and his friend Luca. Two minutes later, another car screeched into the driveway—it was Filomena and her friend Paola, Luca’s girlfriend. They jumped out, and Filomena stormed into the house to scavenge through her room. When she came out, she said, “My room is a disaster. There’s glass everywhere and a rock underneath the desk, but it seems like everything is there.”

The Postal Police showed her the cell phones. “This one is Meredith’s British phone,” Filomena said. “She uses it to call her mother. And I lent her the SIM card to the other one to make local calls.”

The men seemed satisfied; their work was done. They said, “We can make a report that there’s been a break-in. Are you sure nothing was stolen?”

“Not as far as we can tell,” I said. “But Meredith’s door is locked. I’m really worried.”

“Well, is that unusual?” they asked.

I tried to explain that she locked it sometimes, when she was changing clothes or was leaving town for the weekend, but Filomena wheeled around and shouted, “She
never
locks her door!” I stepped back and let her take over the conversation, Italian to Italian. The rapid-fire exchange stretched way past my skills. Filomena shouted at the Postal Police officers, “Break down the door!”

“We can’t do that; it’s not in our authority,” one said.

Six people were now crammed into the tiny hallway outside Meredith’s bedroom, all talking at once in loud Italian. Then I heard Luca’s foot deliver a thundering blow. He kicked the door once, twice, a third time. Finally the impact dislodged the lock, and the door flew open. Filomena screamed, “
Un piede! Un piede!
”—“A foot! A foot!”

A foot?
I thought. I craned my neck, but because there were so many people crowding around the door, I couldn’t see into Meredith’s room at all. “Raffaele,” I said. He was standing beside me. “What’s going on? What’s going on?”

One of the guys shouted, “
Sangue!
Dio mio!
”—“Blood! My God!”

Filomena was crying, hysterical. Her screams sounded wild, animal-like.

The police boomed, “Everyone out of the house. Now!” They called for reinforcements from the Perugian town police.

Raffaele grabbed my hands and pulled me toward the front door.

Sitting outside on the front stoop, I heard someone exclaim, “
Armadio
”—“armoire.”
They found a foot in the closet
, I thought. Then, “
Corpo!
”
—
“A body!”
A body inside the wardrobe with a foot sticking out?
I couldn’t make the words make sense. Filomena was wailing, “Meredith! Meredith! Oh, God!” Over and over, “Meredith! Oh, God!”

My mind worked in slow motion. I could not scream or speak. I just kept saying in my head,
What’s happening? What’s happening?

It was only over the course of the next several days that I was able to piece together what Filomena and the others in the doorway had seen: a naked, blue-tinged foot poking out from beneath Meredith’s comforter, blood splattered over the walls and streaked across the floor.

But at that moment, sitting outside my villa, the image I had was of a faceless body stuffed in the armoire, a foot sticking out.

Maybe that’s why Filomena cried, and I didn’t. In that instant, she’d seen enough to grasp the terrible scope of what had happened. All I got was confusion and words and, later, question after question about Meredith and her life in Perugia. There was nothing I could say about what her body was like in its devastation.

But even with all these blanks, I was still shaken—in shock, I’d guess. Waiting in the driveway, while two policemen guarded the front door, I clung to Raffaele. My legs wobbled. The weather was sunny, but it was still a cold November day, and suddenly I was freezing. Since I’d left the house without my jacket, Raffaele took off his gray one with faux-fur lining and put it on me.