Helen was prizing her fork against a tangle of roots.
'Hold it,' I said.
'What is it?'
'A jar. Don't move the fork.'
I reached down and lifted a quart-size preserve jar out of the mud and water. The top was sealed with both rubber and a metal cap. I squatted down and dipped water out of the hole and rinsed the mud off the glass.
'An envelope and a newspaper clipping? What's Scruggs doing, burying a time capsule?' Helen said.
We walked to the cruiser and wiped the jar clean with paper towels, then set it on the hood and unscrewed the cap. I lifted the newspaper clipping out with two fingers and spread it on the hood. The person who had cut it out of the
Helen turned the jar upside down and pulled the envelope out of the opening. The glue on the flap was still sealed. I slipped my pocketknife in the corner of the flap and sliced a neat line across the top of the envelope and shook three black-and-white photos out on the hood.
Jack Flynn was still alive in two of them. In one, he was on his hands and knees while men in black hoods with slits for eyes swung blurred chains on his back; in the other, a fist clutched his hair, pulling his head erect so the camera could photograph his destroyed face. But in the third photo his ordeal had come to an end. His head lay on his shoulder; his eyes were rolled into his head, his impaled arms stretched out on the wood of the barn wall. Three men in cloth hoods were looking back at the camera, one pointing at Flynn as though indicating a lesson to the viewer.
'This doesn't give us squat,' Helen said.
'The man in the middle. Look at the ring finger on his left hand. It's gone, cut off at the palm,' I said.
'You know him?'
'It's Archer Terrebonne. His family didn't just order the murder. He helped do it.'
'Dave, there's no face to go with the hand. It's not a felony to have a missing finger. Look at me. A step at a time and all that jazz, right? You listening, Streak?'
TWENTY-EIGHT
IT WAS AN HOUR LATER. Terrebonne had not been at his home, but a maid had told us where to find him. I parked the cruiser under the oaks in front of the restaurant up the highway and cut the engine. The water dripping out of the trees steamed on the hood.
'Dave, don't do this,' Helen said.
'He's in Iberia Parish now. I'm not going to have these pictures lost in a St. Mary Parish evidence locker.'
'We get them copied, then do it by the numbers.'
'He'll skate.'
'You know a lot of rich guys working soybeans in Angola? That's the way it is.'
'Not this time.'
I went inside the foyer, where people waited in leather chairs for an available table. I opened my badge on the maitre d'.
'Archer Terrebonne is here with a party,' I said.
The maitre d's eyes locked on mine, then shifted to Helen, who stood behind me.
'Is there a problem?' he asked.
'Not yet,' I said.
'I see. Follow me, please.'
We walked through the main dining room to a long table at the rear, where Terrebonne was seated with a dozen other people. The waiters had just taken away their shrimp cocktails and were now serving the gumbo off of a linen-covered cart.
Terrebonne wiped his mouth with a napkin, then waited for a woman in a robin's-egg-blue suit to stop talking before he shifted his eyes to me.
'What burning issue do you bring us tonight, Mr. Robicheaux?' he asked.
'Harpo Scruggs pissed in your shoe,' I said.
'Sir, would you not-' the maitre d' began.
'You did your job. Beat it,' Helen said.
I lay the three photographs down on the tablecloth.
'That's you in the middle, Mr. Terrebonne. You chain-whipped Jack Flynn and hammered nails through his wrists and ankles, then let your daughter carry your guilt. You truly turn my stomach, sir,' I said.
'And you're way beyond anything I'll tolerate,' he said.
'Get up,' I said.
'What?'
'Better do what he says,' Helen said behind me.
Terrebonne turned to a silver-haired man on his right. 'John, would you call the mayor's home, please?' he said.
'You're under arrest, Mr. Terrebonne. The mayor's not going to help you,' I said.
'I'm not going anywhere with you, sir. You put your hand on my person again and I'll sue you for battery,' he said, then calmly began talking to the woman in a robin's-egg-blue suit on his left.
Maybe it was the long day, or the fact the photos had allowed me to actually see the ordeal of Jack Flynn, one that time had made an abstraction, or maybe I simply possessed a long-buried animus toward Archer Terrebonne and the imperious and self-satisfied arrogance that he and his kind represented. But long ago I had learned that anger, my old enemy, had many catalysts and they all led ultimately to one consequence, an eruption of torn red- and-black color behind the eyes, an alcoholic blackout without booze, then an adrenaline surge that left me trembling, out of control, and possessed of a destructive capability that later filled me with shame.
I grabbed him by the back of his belt and hoisted him out of the chair, pushed him facedown on the table, into his food, and cuffed his wrists behind him, hard, ratcheting the curved steel tongues deep into the locks, crimping the veins like green string. Then I walked him ahead of me, out the foyer, into the parking area, pushing past a group of people who stared at us openmouthed. Terrebonne tried to speak, but I got the back door of the cruiser open and shoved him inside, cutting his scalp on the jamb.
When I slammed the door I turned around and was looking into the face of the woman in the robin's-egg-blue suit.
'You manhandle a sixty-three-year-old man like that? My, you must be proud. I'm so pleased we have policemen of your stature protecting us from ourselves,' she said.
THE SHERIFF CALLED ME into his office early the next morning. He rubbed the balls of his fingers back and forth on his forehead, as though the skin were burned, and looked at a spot six inches in front of his face.
'I don't know where to begin,' he said.
'Terrebonne was kicked loose?'
'Two hours after you put him in the cage. I've had calls from a judge, three state legislators, and a U.S. congressman. You locked him in the cage with a drag queen and a drunk with vomit all over his clothes?'
'I didn't notice.'
'I bet. He says he's going to sue.'
'Let him. He's obstructed and lied in the course of a murder investigation. He's dirty from the jump, skipper. Put that photo and his daughter in front of a grand jury and see what happens.'
'You're really out to burn his grits, aren't you?'
'You don't think he deserves it?' I said.
'The homicide was in St. Mary Parish. Dave, this guy had to have stitches in his head. Do you know what his lawyers are going to do with that?'
'We've been going after the wrong guys. Cut off the snake's head and the body dies,' I said.