Waiting To Be Heard - A Memoir Part 20

More than anything, I wanted my mom. She would help me explain what had happened and get me out of this nightmarish experience. Where is she? How can I reach her? Is she waiting for me at the train station?

I was finally allowed to get dressed. The police had brought me an airy skirt from the villa with my hiking boots. It seemed like such a ridiculous choice for November that I wadded it up in my purse and put back on Raffaele's clothes, which I'd been wearing before.

I asked to use the bathroom. A female police officer stood in front of the stall with the door open. Why is she standing here? I can't relax enough to pee, even if she's looking away. I guessed this unwanted guardian was somehow supposed to keep me safe.

Eventually I put aside my inhibitions long enough to be able to pee. After that they closed the handcuffs back around my wrists. I think they'd left them intentionally loose, but I was so submissive I reported their breach. "Excuse me," I said. "But I can slip my hand out."

They tightened them.

Then they shoved a wool hat down over my eyes. "Duck your head," Ficarra ordered. "Don't look up." She mumbled something about "journalists."

We were standing in a dark foyer. Everything was hushed. My head bent, I was looking at the floor when I suddenly recognized the backs of Raffaele's feet ahead of me. I felt a clenching in my chest. I hadn't seen him since we'd come inside the questura together. I had no idea where he'd come from-or why he was walking just steps ahead of me. I so badly wanted to say something, but I knew I shouldn't make a sound.

I just wanted this ordeal to end.

I was consumed by worry for Patrick. I felt that time was running out for him if I didn't remember for sure what had happened the night of Meredith's murder. When I'd said, "It was Patrick," in my interrogation, the police pushed me to tell them where he lived. As soon as I'd mentioned his neighborhood, several officers surrounding me raced out. I figured that they'd gone to question him. I didn't know that it was too late, that they'd staged a middle-of-the-night raid on Patrick's house and arrested him.

Then the doors to the questura opened, and I was led outside. No one had told me that what I'd said had been made public. With my head down, it didn't register that there were photographers snapping my picture. Nor could I know that the police would be holding a press conference at which they'd announce, "Caso chiuso"-"Case closed." Or that, that evening, news sites would report Raffaele's, Patrick's, and my arrests for "a s.e.xual encounter that went horrifically wrong."

When I look at the pictures of me now-standing in Raffaele's oversize warm-up pants and fleece jacket, a gray wool hat pulled over my eyes-I recall how I followed their directions like a lost, pathetic child. I didn't question, I didn't object, I just put my head down when they told me to and trusted that this would all make sense soon. In that moment, I couldn't see-and it didn't have anything to do with the hat.

I was half-carried, half-pushed from the building, with Ficarra and another person each holding me under an arm. They directed me into a police car, then got in on either side of me. "Duck your head to your knees during the ride," one of the police officers ordered. "Do not try to sit up."

Sirens wailed.

I've since read that the convoy of squad cars drove through Perugia, honking horns in triumph. I only know that we flew along the curving roads in a rush of sound, that we were moving so fast I thought I might get sick in the backseat, that the half-hour trip seemed without end. The officers kept their hands firmly on my back; my eye sockets pressed into my forearms across my knees. The hat pulled down, I was floating, as though I'd escaped from my own body.

Finally our car pulled through the main gate of the Casa Circondariale Capanne di Perugia-not that I knew where we were-and came to a stop inside a dim, cavernous garage. As the doors rumbled closed, I was allowed to sit up. A uniformed prison guard came over, and I tried to catch his eye. I wanted someone, anyone, to look at me and see me for who I was-Amanda Knox, a terrified twenty-year-old girl. He looked through me.

The inner garage door rolled open, and we drove into the prison grounds. My stomach lurched. Concrete walls, ablaze with orange lights and topped with coiled razor wire, stretched up to the night sky in every direction. I felt smaller and more frightened than I'd ever been.

We stopped in front of a single-story building in the center of the complex, where an empty squad car sat. Raffaele's car? At a wave from our driver, we entered the building, Ficarra ahead of me, the other officer behind, each gripping one of my arms. Once inside, they let go. "This is where we leave you," they said. One of them leaned in to give me a quick, awkward hug. "Everything's going to be okay. The police will take care of you."

"Thank you," I said. I gave her a last, beseeching look, hoping this meant that finally they knew we were on the same side.

It didn't.

I spent the next 1,427 nights in prison for a crime I did not commit.

Chapter 12

Evening, November 6, 2007, Day Five

One guard was trying to flex the thick sole of my hiking boot. The other was shaking her head no.

Of all the things they took from me in my first few minutes as an inmate at Capanne Prison, this loss. .h.i.t me the hardest. On my nineteenth birthday my stepdad, Chris, had given me his old GPS and taught me how to use it by driving me on a scavenger hunt. We ended up at an outdoor gear store, where I got to pick out my present: the boots I'd coveted for more than a year. I wore them hiking and mountain climbing and paired them with a skirt or dress when I wanted to make an offbeat fashion statement. The boots made me feel invincible-not dangerous, as the guards were implying. Did they think I'd kick someone with the hard, boxy toe? Or try to hang myself with the flimsy laces?

"Do you have other shoes?" the tall, st.u.r.dy guard asked me. She had a chiseled jaw and hair that had been dyed reddish purple, like a plum. Her name was Lupa, but prisoners weren't allowed to call guards anything but agente or a.s.sistente.

"No, the police took my sneakers," I said. "But they went to my house to get these. Why would they give them to me just to take them away three hours later?"

The other guard, a short, fleshy blonde, continued pawing through my purse/book bag. I later learned the prisoners had nicknamed her Cinema because she spoke in slow motion. "You won't be able to take any of this in with you," she declared flatly.

Everything I needed was in that bag: my wallet, my pa.s.sport, my journal.

"What about my textbooks?" I asked, pleading. "I have school. I'll be back in cla.s.s in a few days. I don't want to fall behind."

"When you leave you can request them from the storeroom," Agente Lupa said.

I couldn't believe what was happening. The police told me they would keep me safe, and then they'd just dropped me off here and left. Why would they have done that? They had already confiscated my cell phone and sneakers, and now the prison guards were taking the things that I always kept with me, the things that identified me. Without money, a credit card, my driver's license, my pa.s.sport, I felt completely vulnerable.

The next orders left me feeling even more defenseless. "Jacket, pants, shirt, socks," Cinema demanded, holding out her hand.

I turned my face away as I took off each piece of borrowed clothing. I handed over Raffaele's sweatpants, his shirt and jacket, his white tube socks.

The cold traveled up from the concrete floor and through my bare feet. I hugged myself for warmth, waiting-for what? What's coming next? Surely they wouldn't give me a uniform, since I was a special case. It wouldn't make sense, since I'd be in prison so briefly.

"Your panties and bra, please," Lupa said. She was polite, even gentle, but it was still an order.

I stood naked in front of strangers for the second time that day. Completely disgraced, I hunched over, shielding my b.r.e.a.s.t.s with one arm. I had no dignity left. My eyes filled with tears. Cinema ran her fingers around the elastic of the period-stained red underwear I'd bought with Raffaele at Bubble, when I thought it'd be only a couple of days before I'd buy more with my mom.

Mom must be frantic. Is she still waiting at the train station? Wandering around Perugia looking for me? Has she called the police to help find me? Does she know I'm here?

"Squat," Lupa said.

I gave her a puzzled look.

She smiled encouragingly and bent her knees to show me. "You see?" she asked.

I squatted, and the women stared at me. Unlike at the questura, these guards were at least kind. They seemed almost like two distant aunts, looking at me with sympathy and speaking to me softly, knowing that what they were asking was excruciatingly humiliating.

Naked and crouching, cringing with shame, I held on to the knowledge that I would be released as soon as I could clear up the misunderstanding with the police. A few hours or maybe a day or two. No more than three-and for sure in a special holding cell, not in the real prison. I saw myself striding out of the gate in my hiking boots, book bag over my shoulder, Mom walking beside me, holding my hand.

"Now cough," Lupa said.

"What?" I asked, puzzled.

"Cough." She faked a cough. I imitated her.

"Good," Lupa said. "Here you go."

She handed me back my clothes, and I got dressed. But I was still shoeless. "Che taglia di scarpe porti?" she asked, pointing at my feet-"What size do you wear?"