Page 75 of Tinley's Daddy
Kyler turned me to face him.
“Are you sure you want to see him?” Kyler bent to my level. “You aren’t required to do more than tell Agent Stanley your story. It’s up to them to use it to stop men like him.”
“I don’t think he understood what he was doing.” I turned back toward the door. “I am the only one who can tell him.”
Agent Stanley nodded and opened the door but closed it.
“Before we go in there, if I or Kyler say so, you leave, okay? No debate. No hesitation. Okay?”
I nodded. Kyler growled.
“Yes, sir.”
He nodded and opened the door. The room had steel gray walls and a metal table in the center. Mr. Crawford and another gentleman sat on the other side. He was handcuffed to a metal chrome bar in the middle of the table.
“Wh-what is she doing here?” Mr. Crawford stuttered.
“Who is this woman?” his lawyer asked.
“She is one of Mr. Crawford’s victims,” Agent Stanley said matter-of-factly.
“One of my?—”
“Bill, be quiet,” his lawyer said.
“Tinley. Sit here.” He pointed at the chair to the left of Mr. Crawford. Kyler took the chair to my left and Agent Stanleypulled up a chair and sat at the head of the table to Mr. Crawford’s left.
“Ms. Tinley has a few questions she would like to ask you.”
“He’s not answering any questions. He knows his right,” the lawyer said.
“Right, you are right. Ms. Tinley is not acting as an agent of the FBI. She’s asking out of her own curiosity. This is all completely off the record.” Agent Stanley waved his hands.
“Then w-what is the p-point?” Mr. Crawford stuttered.
“So, he understands I’m not some stupid whore he fucked in Turkey on vacation.” My voice needed some bass, but the badass line landed a punch regardless.
I peeked over at Kyler, waiting for him to scold me about my language, but he smirked and winked instead.
“A little over two years ago, my fiancé and I were traveling in Europe on vacation. We saved and planned for the trip for a year.” My voice grew stronger as I spoke. I stared right into Mr. Crawford’s eyes. “One night, we visited a BDSM club in Amsterdam when my fiancé was killed and I was taken. I spent the next two weeks drugged and beaten and raped by several different men. I was then taken to a group home where a doctor examined me against my will and inserted an implant.” I rubbed the inside of my arm. “I lay in a room for two straight weeks with other girls coming and going and when I was healed up, they took me to another place where they dressed me up in cute dresses and had someone braid my hair and they took photos of me. Two days later, I was sent to my first ‘client.’ He kept me for two weeks but got tired of me for not doing what he wanted.
“I was sent back to the guys who took me, and they beat me and drugged me and two weeks later, they sent me to someone else to ‘train’ me. I was with him for three weeks.”
Mr. Crawford looked down at his hands.
“It was the most horrifying three weeks of my life.” I stopped and bit my lip to keep the demons at bay. I flipped a few more pages. Smoothed it down. “I guess he trained me too well because the next guy wanted to keep me. That turned out bad, but worse for him. Then I was sent to you. You were number four.”
It surprised me how mature and kind of flippant I sounded. Like all the stuff I wrote in my journal happened to someone else. Or my former self. I didn’t garner any satisfaction or empowerment in sharing what happened to me in this setting. It was more of a chore I had to get through in order to move on and move forward.
Little Tinley was nowhere to be found. Josh was right. I protected her, but I had no fear she wouldn’t return. As soon as I was safe, she would be back, and it made my heart swell with pride. She would be proud of me, too.
“I referred to you as family man.” I traced my finger down the page. “You didn’t physically hurt me. Not like the others, not like the men who took me. I knew right away my time with you would be bearable and that scared me even more. The men who do this to women don’t want someone like you making me feel like a human being. You also had rituals, and it made it easy because I knew exactly what to expect. There were no surprises with you. You would wake me up, have sex with me, clean us both up in the shower, feed me breakfast, put me down for a nap, and then call your wife. It was touching, yet kind of sad. It sounded like she really loved you. But it was when you spoke to your daughter that I remembered what kind of man you were. You typically referred to her as pumpkin or baby, but you slipped one day” —I scanned my notes— “and called her Katie.” I shivered. “Katie girl. That’s the name you gave me.”
The whole room took a collective pause.
“You had to apologize to your daughter for missing her piano recital and your wife reminded you about the trip to her parents’ house for Fourth of July weekend.
“I wanted so badly to call out or scream or even speak to see how you would talk yourself out of it, but I was too afraid.”
