COLD CASE AT CAMDEN CROSSING by Rita Herron

girls?”
    She took another drag of her cigarette. “He may not be bright, but he’s a guy,” she said.
    “Are they of real girls or are you talking magazines?”
    “Those magazines. I don’t know where he gets ’em but he keeps them under his bed. He doesn’t know I found ’em.”
    Chaz shifted, curious. “Do you mind if I take a look in your son’s room?”
    She flicked ashes into a misshapen ashtray that Barry had obviously made out of clay. “Not if you’re trying to pin something on him. I told the sheriff years ago Barry was with me the day of that crash. He didn’t have nothing to do with it.”
    “I didn’t say he did, but earlier he was taking photographs of Tawny-Lynn Boulder. It spooked her.”
    “Barry’s not dangerous. Why’s she acting like that?”
    “Because someone left bloody threats on her doorstep and in her house.”
    Her eye twitched again, and she reached for a half-empty vodka bottle on the table. “He didn’t leave any threats.”
    Chaz gestured to the bedroom with the posters of the high school swim and soccer teams. “If he’s innocent, then it won’t hurt for me to take a look.” This time he didn’t wait for her response.
    He ducked inside and studied the room. There was a single bed covered with a navy comforter with baseballs on it, a dinosaur-shaped lamp and a collection of Hot Wheels cars that filled a shelf next to the bed.
    He glanced at a desk and saw a stack of yearbooks and realized Barry collected them, even though he’d never graduated himself.
    In the desk drawer, he found childlike drawings of a house with the sun shining above it, and stick figures portraying a family. Was Barry dreaming of finding a girl and marriage?
    Chaz studied the photographs on the wall. He’d added a plastic rose above the girls’ team from the crash, a tribute to the lost lives.
    Frowning, Chaz dropped to his knees, checked under the bed and found the stash of girly magazines Mrs. Dothan had mentioned. He also discovered another box and pulled it out, then lifted the lid.
    His gut clenched at what he found inside. Pictures of teenage girls outside the school. A photograph of Ruth and Peyton from years ago when they’d worn harem costumes for a halftime show. Pictures of them dunking water over each other after a softball win.
    A picture of the two of them at the swimming hole in their bikinis.
    Then one of Tawny-Lynn in her bathing suit standing by the dock ready to dive into the lake.
    Barry might not be dangerous, but the pictures were disturbing, and this spying had to stop.
    He carried the pictures out to show Mrs. Dothan. She barely reacted when he laid them on the table. She simply lit another cigarette.
    “Boys will be boys.”
    He opened his mouth to make a point, but the door bust open and Barry stumbled in.
    Chaz frowned at the blood on Barry’s shirt and hands.

Chapter Ten
    When Barry saw Chaz, he turned and bolted. Chaz jumped up and caught him by the arm of his denim jacket. “Wait a minute, Barry.”
    “I didn’t do anything wrong!” Barry shouted. “I didn’t.”
    He gripped Barry by the arms. “How did you get that blood on your shirt and hands?”
    “My nose. I crashed my bike into a tree.”
    “So it’s your blood?”
    Barry nodded but he was shaking, his eyes darting around for an escape. “Yeah, I didn’t hurt nobody.”
    Mrs. Dothan stumbled over from her chair. “Barry, don’t say anything.”
    Chaz reached for the strap of the camera slung over Barry’s shoulder. “What were you doing in the woods? Were you taking pictures?”
    “There’s nothing wrong in taking pictures,” Mrs. Dothan cut in.
    Chaz flipped the camera over and hit the replay button to view the pictures Barry had shot. An uneasy feeling traveled up his spine.
    Various shots of Tawny-Lynn at the crash site. She looked so sad, so vulnerable, so tormented that his heart gave a painful tug.
    “You took pictures of Tawny-Lynn this afternoon,” he said. “I know how you