Waiting to Be Heard: A Memoir (11 page)

“Which was it?”

I took a deep breath. “I don’t remember.”

Ficarra thrust her hand out aggressively and insisted, “Let me see your cell phone.”

I handed it to her. As they looked through it, they kept pounding me with questions. “What movie did you watch?”

“
Amélie
.”

“How long is that movie?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you watch it all the way through?”

“Well, we paused it at some point, because we noticed that the sink was leaking.”

“But you said you’d had dinner before that.”

“I guess you’re right. I think the sink leaked before we watched the movie, but then I remember pausing it.”

“Why did you pause it?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Why? Why? What time?”

“I don’t remember!” I said it forcefully, trying to shake them off, but it didn’t work. They were peppering me relentlessly. The questions seemed simple, but I didn’t have the answers. And the more they asked, the more I lost my bearings. I was getting hot, looking around for air. I was having my period, and I could feel myself bleeding into my underwear. “I need to use the bathroom,” I said. “I have a feminine issue.”

“Not right now,” they said. “Did you pause the movie before dinner or after?”

“I think it was after we had dinner, but now that I think about it, it seemed pretty late when we had dinner.”

“Why can’t you remember? Did you have dinner before or after the movie?”

“You’re freaking me out,” I yelled. “I can’t think when I’m freaked out. It just seemed late when we ate.”

By now their tone was shrill. “Why can’t you just tell us? Why can’t you remember?”

I could tell they thought I was lying. I said, “I’m sorry, it’s hard to remember, and I’m really tired. There are some nights we had dinner earlier and some nights later. It seemed late to me, but I don’t remember what time it was.”

I was exhausted. I hadn’t slept but a few hours in the past four days, and the back-and-forth to the police station—on top of the shock I felt over Meredith—had left me empty. I didn’t know I could say, “We need to stop, because I’m too tired.” I was ashamed that I couldn’t answer their questions, that I was failing. I didn’t know what to do to make it better. I wanted so badly to appease them so they would go away.

The interpreter, a woman in her forties, arrived at about 12:30
A.M.
It’s inconceivable to me now that all the questioning up to that point had been in Italian. For a couple of hours I’d done my best to hang in there, to grasp what they were saying. I kept saying, “Okay, I understand.” I was always mortified when I had to admit that my Italian wasn’t up to speed.

The truth is that although I could guess what they meant, this was another case of my false bravado. By that time, my Italian was fine for exchanging pleasantries over a cup of tea. But in no credible way was it strong enough, after only six weeks in Italy, for me to be defending myself against accusations of murder.

The interpreter sat down behind me. She was irritated and impatient, as if I were the one who had rousted her from bed in the middle of the night.

The silver-haired cop and Ficarra were in the tiny room almost nonstop. When they left, it wasn’t for long, and other cops came in to take their place. Sometimes a crowd of people closed in on me. The room was becoming uninhabitable for me. I really had to use the bathroom, to take care of my period, but now I was too afraid to ask.

Just then a cop—Monica Napoleoni, who had been so abrupt with me about the poop and the mop at the villa—opened the door. “Raffaele says you left his apartment on Thursday night,” she said almost gleefully. “He says that you asked him to lie for you. He’s taken away your alibi.”

My jaw dropped. I was dumbfounded, devastated.
What?
I couldn’t believe that Raffaele, the one person in Italy whom I’d trusted completely, had turned against me. How could he say that when it wasn’t true? We’d been together all night. Now it was just me against the police, my word against theirs. I had nothing left.

“Where did you go? Who did you text?” Ficarra asked, sneering at me.

“I don’t remember texting anyone.”

They grabbed my cell phone up off the desk and scrolled quickly through its history.

“You need to stop lying. You texted Patrick. Who’s Patrick?”

“My boss at Le Chic.”

“What about his text message? What time did you receive that?”

“I don’t know. You have my phone,” I said defiantly, trying to combat hostility with hostility. I didn’t remember that I’d deleted Patrick’s message.

They said, “Why did you delete Patrick’s message? The text you have says you were going to meet Patrick.”

“What message?” I asked, bewildered. I didn’t remember texting Patrick a return message.

“This one!” said an officer, thrusting the phone in my face and withdrawing it before I could even look. “Stop lying! Who’s Patrick? What’s he like?”

“He’s about this tall,” I said, gesturing, “with braids.”

“Did he know Meredith?”

“Yes, she came to the bar.”

“Did he like her?”

“Yes, he liked Meredith. He was nice to her, and they got along.”

“Did he think Meredith was pretty?”

“Well, Meredith was pretty. I’m sure he thought she was pretty.”

“When did you leave to meet Patrick?”

“I didn’t meet Patrick. I stayed in.”

“No, you didn’t. This message says you were going to meet him.”

“No. No, it doesn’t.”

They read the message aloud: “
Certo ci vediamo più tardi buona serata!
”—“Okay, see you later, have a good evening!”

“That means ‘we’re going to see each other,’ ” they said, translating the
Ci vediamo
for me. “You said, ‘See you later.’ Why did you go see him? ”

“I didn’t see him!” I shouted. “In English, ‘see you later’ means good-bye. It doesn’t mean we’re going to see each other
now
. It means see you
eventually
.”

In my beginner’s Italian, I had had no idea that I’d used the wrong phrase in my text to Patrick—the one that means you’re going to see someone. I’d merely translated it literally from the English.

The interpreter balked: “You’re a liar.”

“No, I’m not! I never left Raffaele’s apartment.”

The detectives said, “You did leave. Raffaele said you left. You said you were meeting Patrick.”

How could I make them believe that I’d been at Raffaele’s all night? My protests seemed so flimsy, especially when they ganged up on me. I couldn’t make them believe anything.

I said, “I didn’t leave.”

“Who did you meet up with? Who are you protecting? Why are you lying? Who’s this person? Who’s Patrick?”

The questions wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t think. And even when it didn’t seem possible, the pressure kept building.

I said, “Patrick is my boss.”

The interpreter offered a solution, “Once, when I had an accident, I didn’t remember it. I had a broken leg and it was traumatizing and I woke up afterward and didn’t remember it. Maybe you just don’t remember. Maybe that’s why you can’t remember times really well.”

For a moment, she sounded almost kind.

But I said, “No, I’m not traumatized.”

Another cop picked up the same language. He said, “Maybe you’re traumatized by what you saw. Maybe you don’t remember.”

Everyone was yelling, and I was yelling back. I shouted, “I don’t understand what the fuck is happening right now!”

A beefy cop with a crew cut thought I’d said, “Fuck you,” and he yelled, “Fuck you!” back.

They pushed my cell phone, with the message to Patrick, in my face and screamed, “You’re lying. You sent a message to Patrick. Who’s Patrick?”

That’s when Ficarra slapped me on my head.

“Why are you hitting me?” I cried.

“To get your attention,” she said.

“I’m trying to help,” I said. “I’m trying to help, I’m desperately trying to help.”

The pressure was greater than just being closed in a room. It was about being yelled at relentlessly by people I trusted completely, by people I’d been taught to respect. Everything felt bigger, more overwhelming, more suffocating, than it was because these were people whom I thought I was helping and they didn’t believe me; they kept telling me I was wrong.

They told me I’d been to our house, that they had evidence to prove it. They told me I’d left Raffaele’s. Raffaele himself had said so. They told me I’d been traumatized and had amnesia. I hadn’t slept in days. They wouldn’t let me leave the room or give me a moment to think. Nothing had substance. Nothing seemed real. I believed them. Their version of reality was taking over. I felt confused, frantic, and there was no escape.

People were shouting at me. “Maybe you just don’t remember what happened. Try to think. Try to think. Who did you meet? Who did you meet? You need to help us. Tell us!”

A cop boomed, “You’re going to go to prison for thirty years if you don’t help us.”

The threat hung in the air. I was feeling smaller and smaller, more and more helpless. It was the middle of the night. I was terrified, and I couldn’t understand what was happening. I thought they had to be pressuring me for a reason. They had to be telling me the truth. Raffaele had to be telling the truth. I didn’t trust my own mind anymore. I believed the police. I could no longer distinguish what was real from what wasn’t. I had a moment when I thought I was remembering.

The silver-haired police officer took both of my hands in his. He said, “I really want to help you. I want to save you, but you need to tell me who the murderer is. You need to tell me. You know who the murderer is. You know who killed Meredith.”

In that instant, I snapped.

I truly thought I remembered having met somebody. I didn’t understand what was happening to me. I didn’t understand that I was about to implicate the wrong person. I didn’t understand what was at stake. I didn’t think I was making it up. My mind put together incoherent images. The image that came to me was Patrick’s face.

I gasped. I said his name. “Patrick—it’s Patrick.”

I started sobbing uncontrollably. They said, “Who’s Patrick? Where is he? Where is he?”

I said, “He’s my boss.”

“Where did you meet him?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Yes, you do.”

“I don’t know—at the basketball court.”

“Why did he kill her? Why did he kill her?”

I said, “I don’t know.”

“Did he have sex with Meredith? Did he go into the room with Meredith?”

“I don’t know, I guess so. I’m confused.”

They started treating me like someone who’d been taken advantage of. They told me they were helping me, that they were trying to get to the truth. “We’re trying to do our best for you.”

They were softer, but I was no longer sure of anything—of what was real, of what I feared, of what I imagined.

I wept for a long time.

At 1:45
A.M.
they gave me a piece of paper written in Italian and told me to sign it.

On Thursday, November 1, on a day when I normally work, while I was at my boyfriend Raffaele’s place, at about 20:30, I received a message on my cell phone from Patrik, who told me the club would remain closed that night because there weren’t any customers and therefore I would not have to go to work.

I replied to the message telling him that we’d see each other right away. Then I left the house, saying to my boyfriend that I had to go to work. Given that during the afternoon with Raffaele I had smoked a joint, I felt confused because I do not make frequent use of drugs that strong.

I met Patrick immediately at the basketball court in Piazza Grimana and we went to the house together. I do not remember if Meredith was there or came shortly afterward. I have a hard time remembering those moments but Patrick had sex with Meredith, with whom he was infatuated, but I cannot remember clearly whether he threatened Meredith first. I remember confusedly that he killed her.

As soon as I signed it, they whooped and high-fived each other.

Then, a few minutes later, they demanded my sneakers. As soon as I took them off, someone left the room with them.

Eventually they told me the
pubblico ministero
would be coming in. I didn’t know this translated as prosecutor, or that this was the magistrate that Rita Ficarra had been referring to a few days earlier when she said they’d have to wait to see what he said, to see if I could go to Germany. I thought the “public minister” was the mayor or someone in a similarly high “public” position in the town and that somehow he would help me.

They said, “You need to talk to the
pubblico ministero
about what you remember.”

I told them, “I don’t feel like this is remembering. I’m really confused right now.” I even told them, “I don’t remember this. I can imagine this happening, and I’m not sure if it’s a memory or if I’m making this up, but this is what’s coming to mind and I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

They said, “Your memories will come back. It’s the truth. Just wait and your memories will come back.”

The
pubblico ministero
came in.

Before he started questioning me, I said, “Look, I’m really confused, and I don’t know what I’m remembering, and it doesn’t seem right.”

One of the other police officers said, “We’ll work through it.”

Despite the emotional sieve I’d just been squeezed through, it occurred to me that I was a witness and this was official testimony, that maybe I should have a lawyer. “Do I need a lawyer?” I asked.

He said, “No, no, that will only make it worse. It will make it seem like you don’t want to help us.”

It was a much more solemn, official affair than my earlier questioning had been, though the
pubblico ministero
was asking me the same questions as before: “What happened? What did you see?”

I said, “I didn’t see anything.”

“What do you mean you didn’t see anything? When did you meet him?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Where did you meet him?”

“I think by the basketball court.” I had imagined the basketball court in Piazza Grimana, just across the street from the University for Foreigners.