I could see that they, too, were made of leather, knotted like the piece the cops had found upstairs. "What do you-?"
Mike held his finger to his lips to quiet me as he continued to count. "Six, seven, eight."
The ninth length of rope was missing its knot.
"What is it?"
"Guess you never saw a cat-o'-nine-tails before."
Mike picked up the whip by its handle, shook off the water, then raised his arm and cracked it against the asphalt walk. The sharp sound split the still night air like a gunshot.
"Bound. Tortured. Killed. It's not a pretty way to die.
TWO
Ms. Cooper, are you withdrawing your offer?"
Alton Lamont had taken the bench minutes earlier, just after court officers had uncuffed the prisoner and seated him next to his lawyer.
Although the odors of the waterfront and the grisly scene of the previous evening lingered in my mind's eye and brain, I tried to concentrate on the pretrial proceedings under way in Lamont's courtroom
That's not a real plea bargain she suggested, Your Honor," Gene Grassley said, pointing his stubby forefinger in my direction. "It's Ms. Cooper's version of a death sentence. "Mr. Grassley knows we're going forward." We had spent most of the day selecting a jury and were finishing up the afternoon with some last-minute housekeeping before setting a timetable for opening statements. "My victim boarded her flight in Seattle at dawn-the offer's off the table. Floyd Warren was studying his copy of the indictment as his lawyer talked about him. "My client turned sixty-one last week. He can't serve out thirty years in state prison. "He's looking at fifty if this jury convicts him," Lamont said, smiling at Grassley. "I expect he'll try to do the best he can."
Warren looked up at Lamont, scowled, and licked his front teeth.