Waiting To Be Heard - A Memoir Part 18

"You went to the house?"

"I guess so."

"Was Meredith in the house?"

"I don't remember."

"Did Patrick go in there?"

"I don't know, I guess so."

"Where were you?"

"I don't know. I guess in the kitchen."

"Did you hear Meredith screaming?"

"I don't know."

"How could you not hear Meredith screaming?"

"I don't know. Maybe I covered my ears. I don't know, I don't know if I'm just imagining this. I'm trying to remember, and you're telling me I need to remember, but I don't know. This doesn't feel right."

He said, "No, remember. Remember what happened."

"I don't know."

At that moment, with the pubblico ministero raining questions down on me, I covered my ears so I could drown him out.

He said, "Did you hear her scream?"

I said, "I think so."

My account was written up in Italian and he said, "This is what we wrote down. Sign it."

I want to voluntarily report what happened because I'm deeply disturbed and very frightened of Patrick, the African owner of the pub called "Le Chic" on Alessi Street where I work occasionally. I met him on November 1 at night after I sent a reply to his message with the words "see you later." We soon met about 9 pm at the basketball court in Piazza Grimana. We went to my house on Via della Pergola No. 7. I cannot remember exactly if my friend Meredith was already in the house or if she came after, but I can say that she disappeared into her bedroom with Patrick while I think I stayed in the kitchen. I can't remember how long they were in her bedroom but at one point I heard Meredith screaming and I was scared and covered my ears. I do not remember anything after that. I have a lot of confusion in my head. I do not remember if Meredith screamed or if I heard any thuds because I was in shock, but I could imagine what was going on.

After I signed it, everyone mercifully stopped questioning me, but my mind wouldn't rest. Something didn't feel right. It didn't seem as though I had actually remembered what I said I had. It seemed made up.

In my dull state I thought everything would eventually be okay. I thought I could communicate with people on the outside. My mother was coming that day, and she'd help me figure things out.

I had no more than a shred of memory, but it seemed to hold the truth. I was so afraid of the police, so afraid of sending them in the wrong direction for the wrong person. What if I've told them wrong? What if I don't have amnesia?

And what about the "spontaneous declarations," as the police called what I'd signed? These doc.u.ments didn't take into account that I kept yelling, "I don't know." They didn't say that the police threatened me and yelled at me. None of that is there.

The declarations were in the detectives' words. But now their words were mine, and this shaped everything that followed.

Chapter 11

Morning, November 6, 2007, Day Five

I signed my second "spontaneous declaration" at 5:45 A.M., just as the darkness was beginning to soften outside the small window on the far side of the interrogation room. That was also true on the inside. As soon as I finished crossing the x in "Knox," the agonizing torment ended.

The room emptied in a rush. Except for Rita Ficarra, who sat at the wooden desk where she'd been all night, I was alone in the predawn hush.

Just a few more hours and I'll see Mom, I thought. We'll spend the night in a hotel.

I asked permission to push two metal folding chairs together, balled myself into the fetal position, and pa.s.sed out, spent. I probably didn't sleep longer than an hour before doubt p.r.i.c.ked me awake. Oh my G.o.d, what if I sent the police in the wrong direction? They'll be looking for the wrong person while the real killer escapes. I sat up crying, straining to remember what had happened on the night of Meredith's murder. Had I really met Patrick? Had I even been at the villa? Did I make all that up? I was too exhausted, too rattled, to think clearly. I was gripped by uncertainty about what I'd said to the police and the pubblico ministero. I tried to get Ficarra's attention. "Um, scusi," I murmured tentatively. "I'm not sure what I told you is right."

"The memories will come back with time," Ficarra answered mechanically, barely raising her eyes to look at me. "You have to think hard."

It seemed impossible that I could forget seeing a murder. Still, without feeling sure, I thought I should believe her.

I tried to weave the images that had flashed in my mind the night before into a coherent sequence. But my memories-of Patrick, the villa, Meredith's screams-were disjointed, like pieces of different jigsaw puzzles that had ended up in the same box by mistake. They weren't ever meant to fit together. I'd walked by the basketball court near the villa every day. I'd said, "It was Patrick," because I saw his face. I imagined him in his brown jacket because that's what he usually wore. The more I realized how fragmented these images were, the closer I came to understanding that they weren't actual memories.

Suddenly my cell phone, which had been lying on the desk since it was waved in my face, lit up and started ringing. Ficarra ignored this. "Can I please answer it?" I begged. "I'm sure it's my mom; I'm supposed to meet her at the train station. She'll freak out if I don't answer."

"No," Ficarra said. "You cannot have your phone back. Your phone is evidence."

This moment exemplified how the line between Before and After was marked. I'd stopped being in charge of my life.

For the next half hour my phone rang every few minutes, stopping only while the calls were sent to voice mail. The noise ripped at me, and I began to panic, my body shook. Mom would be sick with worry, wondering what had happened to me, where I was, why I wasn't answering. As a teenager, if I was late checking in, she'd keep trying me until I'd finally pick up, almost always to hear her crying on the other end of the line. I couldn't stand that I was putting her through that now. And now, more than ever, I needed her.

Still, it was a huge relief to know that later, if I had to come back to the questura, my mom would come with me. If they didn't need me, I planned to introduce her to Laura and Filomena-and maybe to Meredith's parents, when they arrived.

Finally my phone went silent. I slumped down in the folding chair, as mute as my cell phone.

I was waiting for the police to tell me what they wanted from me next. That had been the pattern at the questura for the past four days. There would be a lull, and then they would either question me again or send me home. I willed it to be the latter. I couldn't bear for them to yell at me again.

Around 2 P.M. on Tuesday-it was still the same day, although it felt as if it should be two weeks later-Ficarra took me to the cafeteria. I was starving. After the interrogation was over they brought me a cup of tea, but this was the first food or drink I'd been offered since Raffaele and I had arrived at the questura around 10:30 P.M. Monday. With my sneakers confiscated, I trailed her down the stairs wearing only my socks. She turned and said, "Sorry I hit you. I was just trying to help you remember the truth."

I was still too confused to know what the truth was.

I tried to say, "I hope that once this gets sorted out you'll see I'm on your side." But the way my Italian came out was "I hope you can see I'm your friend."

I was desperate for a sign that everything was okay between us, to be rea.s.sured that they still trusted me. I told myself they'd bullied me because they were so stressed, determined to figure out who'd killed Meredith. I had the same feelings. But in rethinking the night, I decided that the police thought I'd been hiding facts from them, that I'd lied. That's why they were angry with me.

I didn't want them to think I was a bad person. I wanted them to see me as I was-as Amanda Knox, who loved her parents, who did well in school, who respected authority, and whose only brush with the law had been a ticket for violating a noise ordinance during a college party I'd thrown with my housemates in Seattle. I wanted to help the police track down the person who'd murdered my friend.

What I did not know was that the police and I had very different ideas about where I stood. I saw myself as being helpful, someone who, having lived with Meredith, could answer the detectives' questions. I would do that as long as they wanted. But the police saw me as a killer without a conscience. It would be a long time before I figured out that our presumptions were exactly the opposite of each other's.

By the time Ficarra and I got to the cafeteria, lunch was nearly over. I asked for an espresso, and the barista scavenged a few slices of salami and a piece of bread from the slim sandwich makings that were left. When we went back upstairs, a police officer handed me my hiking boots. Someone at the questura had gone back to the villa to get them. I'm sure they'd used it as an opportunity to comb through my stuff. Still, I was a lot more worried about what was in my head than on my feet. What had come over me? Why was I so confused? Why had I made those statements, which now seemed less and less like the truth?

I repeated to Ficarra the same things I'd said earlier. "What I described last night doesn't seem like memories. I feel like I imagined the events."