[RebelYell]

I didn't intend to kill Tina.
That's what she told me her name was, anyway.

I only wanted to keep her. I wanted her to be mine. Something about her made me want to have her around and so I did keep Tina all to myself.
Her prison for two days was my fourth-floor room at one of the nicest hotels in Seattle. For me, hotel life is my life. I wanted it to be her life, too.
As it turned out, it became her death.

I go from city to city on business. I don't have anybody to answer to after I leave home and I enjoy my travels.
Lately, though, I've been wanting more than restaurant food, cable television and barflies. I started scanning newspaper ads and looking up the numbers of escort services in the phone book. I had found ladies who would spend evenings with me, but that was all. They would take my money, give me a friendly hug and then I would never see them again.
I could tell these ladies anything. I could lie to them and it didn't matter if they believed me or not.

But Tina was different. She was a turning point in my life. I met her and believed I could save her from a life full of traveling salesmen and "johns" whom she would only use for money. She would fall into some kind of drug addiction, have an unwanted pregnancy, even become the property of some pimp whose only interest in her was cash flow.
I wanted to do something for her. I wanted to be something more to her.

She stayed well into Tuesday morning and when I awoke and she was still there beside me, I was certain she was the woman for whom I was searching. Maybe she felt obligated since I had paid her twice her normal asking price. I asked her if she would stay until I returned Tuesday evening and she said yes.

I was excited. I gave her a couple hundred more dollars so she could go out and have herself a good lunch and maybe buy some new clothes. I felt like I had found my own "Pretty Woman."
But when I arrived Tuesday night, I found Tina on the phone setting up a late-night encounter with another man. She insisted that her late rendezvous would not spoil our evening. She was going to allow me to have my way with her before she had to go.

I was going to have my way with her, but she wasn't going anywhere.

By the time I was through, Tina was in no condition to go anywhere. I turned off her cell phone and then looked at her and the helpless way I had left her. She wasn't going anywhere for a while. I just needed a few hours to think about what I could do to convince her to stay -- without the help of the two telephone cords I had used to tie her to the end of the bed.

When I returned, I knew that I could convince the girl to come with me to my next destination. We would get her cleaned up, buy her some nice things and she would understand I wasn't a bad person.
I was going to take the gag out of her mouth when she began to scream and struggle. This wasn't going to work.
But I didn't mean to kill her.

I sat in my room for an hour trying to figure out what to do with her lifeless body. I waited until there was no movement in the hallway and looked out to see what my options were. I was close enough to the stairway door to take her there, down past the lobby and to the underground parking garage. I could just leave her there.

This is Seattle, after all ... the home of grunge music and serial killers.

I carried her to the stairwell door and began going down the steps when, up above, I heard a door open. It might be 8 or 10 floors up, but I panicked. I put her down carefully, quietly, and headed back up toward my room. At my floor, I slid through the door as the footsteps from above got closer. Seconds later, I watched as a person flashed by the small window. Then he stopped and reached toward the door.

I froze. Did he see me?

And then he continued to go down the stairs with a baseball bat he had just picked up from out of the corner of the stairwell.

I was safe. I went back to remove any evidence from the scene of the crime.