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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 Times-Picayune had carefully included the strip at the top of the page which gave the date, August 8, 1956. The headline on the story read: "Union Organizer Found Crucified."
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 maître d'.
"Archer Terrebonne is here with a party," I said.
The maître 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 maître d' began.
