Waiting To Be Heard - A Memoir Part 24

About an hour after I got back to my cell from the hearing, Agente Lupa came to the door. "Get your things," she said, smiling broadly. "I convinced the inspector to let you have a roommate so you're not by yourself. I'm moving you across the hall."

I was grateful for her effort. However, as I would end up sharing close quarters with a series of women I didn't know, often didn't like, and rarely felt I could trust, I couldn't help but remember the expression "killing with kindness." I sometimes mused to myself that the crazy roommates were another aspect of the prison intended by the prosecution to break me down.

My first cellmate, Gufa, was a woman in her late forties. She had decaying teeth and lank, greasy, graying hair. Her face and arms were covered with sores, which she picked at constantly. Not knowing what they were, I was afraid to sit on the rim-there was no seat-of the toilet we shared, for fear she might be contagious.

The enormous gla.s.ses she wore made her look like an owl, and she sounded like one, too. When I walked in, she squawked at me in a dialect I could barely understand, telling me where to put my things, how to make my bed. She kept the room dark, because she slept off and on during the day. She collected garbage-food wrappers, pens without ink, used tissues-which she stored in her clothing locker, like a squirrel hiding nuts. Even though I never gave in to her, she was nosy, bossy, and demanding. She insisted on knowing about my case, wanted my lawyers to advise her on hers, and badgered me constantly to buy her snack food and other supplies and equipment for our cell from the order form that came around each week.

Still, she wasn't aggressive or spiteful, like other roommates I would eventually have. In her own weird way, Gufa tried to take care of me, in the same way a pet cat that drops a freshly dead rat at your feet thinks it's giving you a gift.

But what I wanted more than anything was for the guards to open the door and let me out. I wanted to see my mom. Until then, I just wanted to be left alone.

The day after my hearing, an agente did show up at my cell with a large gold key and unlocked the door. But it wasn't for the reason I'd hoped.

Grasping my arm, she led me down to a desk in the main hall on the ground floor. There, a curt, middle-aged guard pushed a piece of paper in front of me. "Firmi qua, prego," he said.

"Sign here? What is it?" I asked.

"It's the judge's paperwork," the male guard explained, his voice without inflection. "The confirmation of your arrest. It says the judge 'applies the cautionary measure of custody in prison for the duration of one year.' "

"One year!" I cried out.

I was floored. I had to sit down and put my head between my knees. That's when I learned how different Italian and U.S. laws can be. The law in Italy allows for suspects to be held without charge during an investigation for up to a year if a judge thinks they might flee, tamper with evidence, or commit a crime. In the United States, suspects have to be indicted to be kept in custody.

I felt I had only myself to blame. If I'd had the will to stick to the truth during my interrogation, I would never have been put in jail. My imprisonment was my fault, because I'd given in to the police's suggestions. I'd been weak, and I hated myself for it.

I sank to a new level of helplessness. Now I understood that no amount of explanation to the police or memoriali would clear things up. My fate was wholly dependent on the investigators. I wouldn't be released until the prosecution finished a.n.a.lyzing the evidence. Only then would they realize that I hadn't been at all involved in the murder.

Thank G.o.d I can count on my innocence to save me!

When they came to see me that afternoon, however, my lawyers weren't optimistic about a quick resolution. Likely they worried that I was stashed away in prison so the prosecutor, Giuliano Mignini, could steer the investigation in whatever direction he chose.

I veered between hope and despair. My life was in limbo. I couldn't do anything more to explain myself to the prosecution. I couldn't go back to school. I couldn't even ask Raffaele why he'd changed his story. I couldn't go home for Christmas. I felt as if the lights were going out. Sitting on my bed, hugging my knees, I thought, I can't spend a whole year here. I'll die.

Part Two

CAPANNE I

Chapter 15

November 1013, 2007

The person I most needed to see was sitting alone at a wooden desk. Mom. Her straight hair fell limply around her face. As always, she was picking at her fingernails. I knew without looking that they were chewed raw, her reaction to anxiety. As soon as I walked into the small room, she stood, rushed toward me, and started crying, mirroring the relief I felt at having her in front of me.

Her face radiated concern and love, a look I'd seen when I came to her with a broken heart, or didn't do as well as I'd hoped on a test, or volunteered that I'd tried marijuana. Her empathy and advice always made me feel on safe ground. I didn't really get into trouble in high school, but I knew that if I did, she would support me through the situation. When I was at odds with myself, she'd rea.s.sure me that I was worthy of a happy life.

Now my no-questions-asked, I'll-come-help-you-wherever-you-are mother sat across from me in an empty room in Capanne Prison. This time she couldn't just make it all go away. She couldn't do anything but comfort me.

After being separated first by an ocean and two continents and then by prison bureaucracy, walls, and bars, we hugged each other so tightly there was no s.p.a.ce between us. Mom forced a smile, but tears rolled down her cheeks and into my hair as she nuzzled me. "Oh, my baby, my baby!" she whispered. "I love you so much. I've felt sick from needing to see you."

Holding me, she asked, "Are you all right? They say you told them you were there, that you were with Patrick. There are all these awful stories about you. Where are all these rumors coming from? Tell me everything."

"I'm so sorry, Mom. I'm so sorry," I moaned. "I didn't mean for any of this to happen."

I had so much to explain. After four days of being ordered around and ignored, I was finally in front of the one person who had always listened. But I worried that the overwhelming need I'd felt to tell the police what they wanted to hear wouldn't make sense to anyone who had never been pushed so far. How could I explain it to her when I didn't even understand it myself? More than anything, I needed my mother to believe me.

When we finally let go of each other, I pushed two chairs close together, fortunate that the agente observing us was less strict than some about letting visitors and inmates sit side by side. Like every room in the prison so far, this one was freezing. Mom held my hands in her lap and rubbed them. I knew the particular feeling of her hands-the only adult hands I'd ever come across as small as mine, but always warmer. She looked at me as though she were trying to absorb me into herself. Her face was strained from attempting to hold back tears. It tortured me to see Mom so upset and to know that I was the cause of it. But even troubled, her expressions-more familiar to me than my own face-were soothing.

I went through my interrogation with her step by step-the repeated questions, the yelling, the threats, the slaps. I explained to her how terrified I'd felt.

"I didn't come up with those things on my own," I said. "I told them I'd been with Raffaele all night at his apartment. But they demanded to know whom I'd left to meet, who Patrick was, if I had let him into the villa. They insisted I knew who the murderer was, that I'd be put in jail for thirty years if I didn't cooperate."

"Amanda," she said, her eyes wide, "I can't believe you had to go through that by yourself."

I told her that I had signed the witness statements out of confusion and exhaustion, that as soon as I had a few minutes by myself, I realized that what I'd said under pressure might be wrong. "I thought I could fix my mistake by explaining it in writing," I said. "Instead, they arrested me."

Mom listened, pulling me close. There was never a moment when it seemed that my words weren't reaching her.

When I finally finished, I got up the courage to ask her the question that had made me panic every time I'd thought about it. What will I do if she says no or "I'm not sure"?

I took a deep breath and exhaled. I was afraid to look her in the eye. "Do you believe me?"

I could see her surprise-then her sadness. "Of course I believe you! Oh, honey, how could I ever not?"

The immense burden I'd been carrying by myself lifted. I felt light-headed with relief. It was the first time since before my arrest that I'd talked to someone who knew I was innocent, who believed in me. I had longed to hear that for days-from anyone! Of course it came from the most important person in my life.

There was one more question I was burning to ask. "How did you even know I was in prison? How did you know where to find me? They refused to let me pick up my phone when you called me. They wouldn't let me call you back."

"A friend of Chris's phoned the house after you were arrested," Mom said, tearing up again. "That's how he found out. My original flight to Rome was cancelled, and I'd just landed in Zurich when he called me. I just didn't believe it. As soon as we hung up, I ran to the bathroom and threw up. Then I had to call your father. It was the middle of the night in Seattle. I hated to leave such horrible news in a voice mail for him to wake up to, but I didn't have any choice. I had to let him know.

"I was frantic to get to you. And all I could do was wait in the airport for hours for a new flight to Rome. I didn't get to Perugia until about three A.M. By then you were already in jail. I was hysterical."

Since the hearing, I'd realized that she couldn't mamma-bear me out of prison. "Now I'll have to stay here until the prosecutor figures out there isn't any evidence against me-that I wasn't at the scene of Meredith's murder."

Mom squeezed my hands rea.s.suringly. "I promise everything's going to be okay, Amanda. It's not your fault that the police scared you-you tried to fix things."

The agente opened the door. "It's time to go, Knox," she said. She p.r.o.nounced my name the way all the prison officials did: "Kuh-nok-ks." It sounded as if they were trying to mimic the noise a hammer makes when dropped.

Mom held me tightly for half a minute more. We both were crying, but I felt so much better for having seen her. I didn't beg to stay with her longer, because I knew the answer would be no. Just asking would probably get me into trouble.

"I'll be back in a few days-as soon as they let me," Mom said. "Carlo and Luciano will come talk to you again, and your dad is flying over. This is all a big misunderstanding, and it will get fixed. We'll be here with you for as long as it takes. We'll get through this together. I love you so much."

I was led back to my cell, but my heart had lifted.