"We should call it a day," he said, standing. He knocked on the door. "a.s.sistente!"
I could not stop wailing.
Carlo helped me out of my chair. He held his hand gently against my back when the agente opened the door.
"It"s a rough day," he explained.
The agente grasped my shoulders firmly and steered me around the corner, almost into the ispettore-"supervisor"-who was walking down the hall.
"What"s wrong with you? What happened?" she asked.
"I saw Meredith"s autopsy photo."
"What?"
"Meredith"s autopsy photo," I mumbled.
The ispettore looked at me bewildered. "But you"ve already seen her dead!"
I wanted to break away from the agente"s grip. The ispettore thought I had killed Meredith. Everyone thought I"d killed Meredith.
I wanted to go back to my cell, to be by myself. I wanted everyone to stop looking at me. I wanted to breathe. I couldn"t get Meredith"s face out of my mind-the complete absence of expression, the grayish yellow tone of her skin, the dark and vivid red of the wound. I couldn"t reconcile the Meredith I knew with the image I"d just seen.
Instead of walking me to my cell, the agente led me into the infirmary and directed me to sit down in front of the doctor on duty.
"What happened?" he asked, leaning forward.
"Meredith"s autopsy photos," I said, my hysteria having dwindled to a sniffle. "I just saw them for the first time."
"I can prescribe a sedative for you."
"No. Please, I just want to go back to my cell."
He paused a moment, then met the agente"s eyes. "As you wish," he said.
Chapter 22
JuneSeptember 2008
Everything-and nothing-changed the morning in late June when I was called downstairs to sign yet another doc.u.ment. The guard barely raised his eyes while pulling out the paperwork and pointing to the line awaiting my signature. When I finished, he handed me the last copy from the stapled pile. I recognized Mignini"s illegible scrawl and Judge Matteini"s loopy cursive that always made the M look like a W. Watteini.
It was only after I went back upstairs and sat down on my bed that I read:
-NOTICE OF THE CONCLUSION OF THE PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATIONS-
The Prosecutors Dr. Giuliano Mignini and Dr. Manuela Comodi;
considering the doc.u.ments in the proceedings indicated in the epigraph registered on 6/11/2007 in regard to:
KNOX, Amanda Marie, born in Seattle (the state of Washington-USA) on 7/9/1987 ... presently detained in the Casa Circondariale Capanne of Perugia;
SOLLECITO, Raffaele, born in Bari on 3/26/1984 ... presently detained in the Casa Circondariale of Terni;
GUEDE, Rudy Hermann, born in Agou (the Ivory Coast) on 12/25/1986 ... presently detained in the Casa Circondariale of Perugia;
persons subject to the preliminary investigations all, for having, in collaboration, murdered Kercher Meredith by strangulation and a profound lesion by a pointed, cutting weapon ... and taking advantage of the late hour and the isolated position of the apartment ... and having committed the act for trivial reasons while Guede, in collaboration with the others, committed rape; Knox and Sollecito, for having, in collaboration, carried out of Sollecito"s apartment, without justifiable reason, a large, pointed, and cutting knife; Guede for having, in collaboration with Knox and Sollecito, forced Kercher Meredith to suffer s.e.xual acts, with manual or genital penetration, by means of threat and violence; all because, in collaboration, for having procured for themselves an unjust profit by having taken possession of a sum of 300 euro, two credit cards, and two cell phones, all belonging to the same Meredith; Sollecito and Knox, for having, in collaboration, simulated an attempted robbery with the break-in in the bedroom of Romanelli Filomena, breaking the window with a rock found around the house and left in the room, near the window, all in order to a.s.sure themselves impunity for the crimes of murder and rape, attempting to attribute the responsibility to strangers having entered the apartment.
Events having occurred the night between 1 and 2 November 2007.
Knox, for having, with further acts executed in the same criminal design, knowing him to be innocent, in declarations made to the Police Flying Squad of Perugia on 6 November 2007, falsely blamed Diya Lumumba, called "Patrick," of the murder of Kercher Meredith, in order to a.s.sure herself impunity for everyone and in particular Guede Rudy Hermann, also of color like Lumumba, in Perugia the night between 5 and 6 November 2007.
NOTIFY
the persons subject to the preliminary investigations: that the preliminary investigations are concluded.
Oh my G.o.d. I"ve been formally charged with murder.
I wanted to scream, "This is not who I am! You"ve made a huge mistake! You"ve got me all wrong!"
I was now fluent enough in Italian to see how ludicrous the charges were. Along with murder, I was charged with illegally carrying around Raffaele"s kitchen knife. It was galling. Real crimes had been committed against Meredith; the police owed her a real investigation. Instead, they were spinning stories to avoid admitting they"d arrested the wrong people.
I shouldn"t have been thrown when I received these formal charges. For nearly eight months, I"d been jailed as a suspect. I"d been expecting my indictment to be sent down since the awful day when Carlo had made me face up to the gruesome autopsy photos.
But a tiny part of me had held out hope that when Mignini spread all the evidence before him, he would see that his theory didn"t hold up.
Luciano and Carlo came to see me soon after.
"Now"s our chance to stand up and fight," Luciano said, punching the air. "This is what we"ve been waiting for."
Finally we could combat all the misinformation leaked to the media. We could explain that the knife had never left the kitchen, the striped sweater had never gone missing, the receipts weren"t for bleach, the underwear I bought wasn"t s.e.xy. We could describe how the prosecution had come up with the b.l.o.o.d.y footprints. We"d explain why Meredith"s blood had mixed with my DNA in our shared bathroom, how my blood got on the faucet, and correct the notion that the crime was a s.e.x game gone wrong. We could object to the prosecutor painting me as a wh.o.r.e and a murderer. My lawyers would finally get to see the prosecution"s doc.u.ments. No more surprises.
"Our forensic experts are already reviewing the files to prepare for the pretrial in September," Carlo added. "Now that the investigation"s over, we"ll have a different presiding judge. We hope whoever it is will have a better sense of logic than Claudia Matteini."
"You have to be kidding me! We have to wait all summer?" I moaned.
That"s when I found out that the Italian courts shut down almost completely for the last half of July and all of August.
I spent that afternoon jogging alone: round and round in small, dizzying circles in the courtyard outside the chapel. I"d long ago figured it took about eighty laps to make a mile. Suddenly, Argir opened the door. "Kuh-nox," he called, waving me inside.
Odd. Prison is all about routine, and this had never happened before.
"What"s going on?" I asked, confused.
"We"re taking you off your restricted status."