I still thought they were using me to find out more information about Meredith-her habits, whom she knew, who could possibly have had a motive to kill her. I started trying to describe the exact time I saw Meredith leave the house. I said, "I think it was around two P.M.-one or two. I"m not sure which. I don"t wear a watch, and the time didn"t matter-it was a holiday. But I know it was after lunch."
Then the questions shifted. They asked, "When did you leave your house?"
At first, when they started questioning me about what I did, I thought they were just trying to test whether I was telling the truth-maybe because I"d lied about our marijuana use.
I said, "Before dinner-four-ish maybe."
They said, "Are you sure it was four-ish? Was it four o"clock or five o"clock? You didn"t see the time?"
"No. Then we went to Raffaele"s place."
"How long it did it take you to get there?"
"I don"t know-a couple of minutes. He doesn"t live far away."
"What happened then?"
"Nothing happened. We had dinner; we watched a movie; we smoked a joint; we had s.e.x; we went to bed."
"Are you positive? Nothing else?"
"Well, I got a text message from my boss telling me I didn"t have to work that night."
"What time did that happen?"
"I think around eight P.M.-maybe. Maybe it was before then." I was thinking, It had to be before I"d normally go to work. "Maybe seven or eight?"
That wasn"t good enough for them.
They kept asking me for exact times, and because I couldn"t remember what had happened from 7 P.M. to 8 P.M. and 8 P.M. to 9 P.M. they made it seem as if my memory were wrong. I started second-guessing myself. Raffaele and I had done some variation of watching a movie, cooking dinner, reading Harry Potter, smoking a joint, and having s.e.x every night for the past week. Suddenly it all ran together so that I couldn"t remember what time we"d done what on Thursday, November 1. I kept saying, "I"m sorry, I"m sorry."
I was afraid to say that I didn"t know the difference between 7 P.M. or 8 P.M., and I was beginning to feel panicky because they were demanding that I know. My heart was hammering, my thoughts were scrambled, and the pressure on the sides of my head made it feel as if my skull were going to split apart. I couldn"t think. Suddenly, in trying to distinguish between this time or that time, this sequence of events or that one, I started forgetting everything. My mind was spinning. I felt as if I were going totally blank.
"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?"
"Amelie."
"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 p.o.o.p 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."