Waiting To Be Heard - A Memoir Part 11

Still worked up, I turned around and gaped. "How could she not have suffered?" I said. "She got her f.u.c.king throat slit. f.u.c.king b.a.s.t.a.r.ds."

I was angry and blunt. I couldn't understand how the others remained so calm. No one else was pacing. No one else was muttering or swearing. Everyone else was so self-contained. First I showed not enough emotion; then I showed too much. It's as if any goodwill others had toward me was seeping out like a slow leak from a tire, without my even realizing it.

I suspect that Raffaele thought I was having a breakdown. He sat me in his lap and bounced me gently. He kissed me, made faces at me, and told me jokes-all in an effort to soothe my agitation, babying me so I would stop storming around.

I cringe to say that treating me like an infant helped. Normally it would have repelled me. But at that time it worked.

Finally I took my journal from my purse and scribbled down a few stream-of-consciousness lines about how unreal all of this was and how I wished I could write a song about the heinous, tragic event-a personal tribute to Meredith. I thought that, like the act of writing itself, music might somehow help me feel better. Later, when the police confiscated my notebook and its contents were leaked to the press, people saw this as proof that I was trivializing Meredith's death.

They found more evidence in my gallows humor. I wrote, "I'm starving. And I'd really like to say that I could kill for a pizza but it just doesn't seem right."

I had so many thoughts clamoring in my brain at once that I was writing whatever came into my head. I never meant to share these things, only to give myself some relief. The words in my journal were taken literally, and they d.a.m.ned me. It was a situation I would find myself in again and again.

It was early morning by the time I put my notebook away. The police weren't stopping to sleep and didn't seem to be allowing us to, either. Raffaele and I were part of the last group to leave the questura, along with Laura, Filomena, Giacomo, and the other guys from downstairs, at 5:30 A.M.

The police gave Raffaele and me explicit instructions to be back at the questura a few hours later, at 11 A.M. "Sharp," they said.

I can't recall who dropped us off at Raffaele's apartment. But I do remember being acutely aware that I didn't have anywhere else to go.

Photo Section Part One

Me, age four.

Me at age thirteen, the year my teammates dubbed me Foxy Knoxy for the way I moved the soccer ball down the field.

My sister Deanna and me on the train en route to Perugia, August 2007.

My first afternoon at No. 7, Via della Pergola, with my future Italian roommates. From left: Filomena Romanelli, me, Laura Mezzetti.

At the train station in Perugia in September 2007, embarking on my long-awaited year abroad.

Meredith Kercher, our fourth roommate at No. 7, Via della Pergola, was twenty-one and an exchange student from outside London. (Press a.s.sociation via AP Images)

Raffaele Sollecito, my boyfriend of one week, whom I met at a cla.s.sical music performance.

The kitchen/living area at No. 7, Via della Pergola, where we often relaxed together with our downstairs neighbors. (Iberpress/Barcroft Media)

Diya "Patrick" Lumumba, my boss at the bar Le Chic. (Tiziana Fabi/AFP/Getty Images)

At the villa on Sat.u.r.day, November 3, I'm explaining to detectives what I'd seen upon arriving home the day before, when Meredith's body was found. I didn't realize that the police had already considered me a murder suspect. ( Pietro Crocchioni/epa/Corbis)

Police officer Lorena Zugarini (left) and Rita Ficarra, my chief interrogator (right), lead me to a squad car after my arrest. ( Pietro Crocchioni/epa/Corbis)

Chapter 8

November 3, 2007, Day Two

When Raffaele and I returned to the questura on Sat.u.r.day, at 11 A.M., the waiting room was empty. Some of Meredith's British friends were flying home that day, too devastated and scared to stay. Two of the girls had caught a bus to the airport at seven o'clock-about the time I was finally just getting to sleep.

I had the same opportunity. Mom had asked in one of our phone conversations the night before if I wanted her to buy me a plane ticket to Seattle. "No," I said. I had been adamant. "I'm helping the police."

I never considered going home. I didn't think it was right to run away, and that's exactly how I looked at it-as running away from being an adult. I knew that murders can and do happen anywhere, and I was determined not to let this tragedy undo all I'd worked so hard for over the past year. I liked my cla.s.ses at the University for Foreigners, and I knew my family's finances didn't allow for re-dos. The way I saw it, if I went home, I'd be admitting defeat. And my leaving wouldn't bring Meredith back.

But I understood why Meredith's British girlfriends were panic-stricken. I was, too. That morning a London newspaper had called Meredith's killer "a knife-wielding maniac." He was still on the loose, possibly getting ready to strike other victims, possibly me. I didn't need Chris to warn me against being alone. I was already so paranoid I refused to let Raffaele out of sight in his one-room apartment. Walking down the street with his arm around me, I kept looking nervously over my shoulder to make sure no one was following us. Pa.s.sing cars made me jump. Had the murderer watched our house, waiting until one of us was alone to make his move? I couldn't help but wonder, Would I have died if I'd been home Thursday night? All that separated Meredith's and my room was one thin wallboard. Why am I alive and she's now lying in the morgue? And: Could I be the next victim?

I hated that I felt so traumatized. As my family, friends, and the UW foreign exchange office checked in one after another, they each said some version of "Oh my G.o.d, you must be so scared and alone." I didn't want to admit that they were right, that what I was going through was too stressful for me to handle by myself. But the last thing I wanted from my parents-even though it's probably what I needed most-was to be treated like a child.

I believed I had to demonstrate to Mom, Dad, and myself-as if my whole personhood depended on it-that I was in control, that I could take care of things in a mature, responsible way. And just as I'd had some wrong-headed notion about the link between casual s.e.x and adulthood, I was also sure that an adult would know how to deal with whatever was thrown at her-including how to behave if her roommate were brutally murdered. It wasn't logical, but I believed that I'd made the decision to come to Perugia and that, while no one could possibly have antic.i.p.ated Meredith's death, I just had to suck it up. I treated the whole incident as if it were an unantic.i.p.ated situation I had found myself in and now I had to handle it.

So, anytime I was on the phone with my parents I put my energy into rea.s.suring them that I was okay. Just as I hadn't wanted to alarm my mom when I'd first run out of the villa after seeing the p.o.o.p in the toilet, I still didn't want to alarm her. Therefore, each phone conversation was more or less the same. "Yeah, I'm really tired, but it's going to be okay. I'm with Raffaele. He's taking good care of me. My roommates are looking for a new place. Don't worry, don't worry, don't worry."

We don't have a traditional parent-child relationship, one where they would have insisted I come home against my wishes. And, at the time, I believed what I was telling them. But looking back now, I think I was too afraid to admit the truth, that it would somehow mean I'd failed.

On a Sat.u.r.day morning when I would ordinarily have been drinking coffee in my pajamas and reading my Italian Harry Potter, I was sitting in a sterile police office waiting to be questioned-again. I was wearing the same clothes I'd put on for my date with Raffaele a day earlier; they were now all I had. I'd hardly slept in twenty-four hours. Nor had I been able to quell the mind-flattening rage that had erupted the previous night. The only way to do that, I was sure, was to help the police find Meredith's killer. I wanted justice for her, and as her friend, roommate, and the person who might also have been murdered had I been there that night, I was sure I was the police's best resource.

The police immediately sent Raffaele home and sat me down in front of an old computer monitor to identify who was who in Facebook pictures of Meredith and her friends on Halloween. I didn't know many of her buddies to begin with, but the job of figuring out people's ident.i.ties had been rendered nearly impossible by the fact that almost everyone, including Meredith, was wearing a lurid disguise-zombie paint, Scream masks, fake teeth, vampire blood. The irony was painful.

When we finished, a detective put me through a second round of questioning, this time in Italian. Did we ever smoke marijuana at No. 7, Via della Pergola? "No, we don't smoke," I lied, squirming inwardly as I did.

I didn't see that Laura had left me with any choice, and I felt completely trapped by her demand. I could barely breathe until the detective moved on to a new topic, and when he did, I was hugely relieved. I thought that was the end of it.

Even through the language barrier, I picked up on a change in the detective's tone from the night before. He was pushy, his questions repet.i.tive. He told me to list the people who'd visited our house, and any guys Meredith knew. "We need every name," he said. "Who invited them? How many times did they come over? What type of relationship did Meredith have with them? Did she ever have a fight with them?"

Aside from what I said about our villa's drug habits, I told him everything I could possibly think of. I scoured my brain to remember anyone who had even glanced at Meredith. I scrolled through my Italian phone and gave him the names and numbers of every contact I had. Even with all that, he acted as if what I'd told him wasn't enough. He kept pressing for more. I didn't have any more.

It's hard to believe I had no inkling that the police suspected me. But why would they have? I was innocent. I'd been taught by my parents to do my civic duty. I was so intent on helping them, I couldn't step back. And I thought I understood why they were pressuring me.

If you drew a diagram with Meredith's housemates in one circle and her friends in another, I was the only person in Italy in both circles. Unlike Laura and Filomena, Meredith and I were close in age, both college students, and native English speakers. Unlike Amy, Robyn, and the other British girls, we spit out our toothpaste into the same sink and shared the food in the fridge. If anyone knew a detail that could help track down her killer, it would likely have been me.

When I wasn't being questioned, I hung out in the waiting room for the police to give me a new set of instructions. I spent almost every free minute on the phone with one of my parents. Mom and Aunt Dolly had decided it would be good for me to spend some time with Dolly and her family in Hamburg until the murderer was caught. I was willing to go anywhere, as long as it wasn't home for good.

That afternoon, I was talking to a steely brown-haired police officer named Rita Ficarra-although I didn't find out her name until two years later, when she testified against me in court. I said, "My parents want me to go to Germany to stay with relatives for a couple of weeks. Is that okay?"

She said, "You can't leave Perugia. You're an important part of the investigation."

She didn't seem like a person you'd ever want to argue with. "How long will you need me?" I asked.

"We don't know-maybe months," she said.

This stunned me. "But I'm planning to go home for Christmas."

"Well, we'll decide if you can do that," she said. "We'll have to hear what the magistrate says when he calls in three days."

When I repeated this conversation to my mom, she was concerned. "That doesn't make sense," she said.