Page 28 of One Final Target

“I miss me too,” Jodie whispered. She wiped away her own tears.

Shannon nodded. “Please remember we care. We want to help. And we will keep praying. God is there. He’s never left you. Keep talking to him; keep the dialogue open.”

“I wish it were so simple.”

“It is. I know it is. And I’ll keep praying you come to realize just how simple it really is.”

CHAPTER16

THE LAB CALLED AGAIN AFTER LUNCH.Sam heard the excitement in his boss’s voice, and he stopped what he was doing. The good news came when Smiley ended the call.

“The prints from the car didn’t pan out to be anything but Doug and his girlfriend. But the lab pulled some good thumbprints from the live rounds left at the scene and from the rounds in the clip we recovered on the ATV. With those we got a hit through DMV records.” He handed Sam a name written on a piece of paper and Sam read the name out loud.

“Dennis Marshall Collins.” He looked up at Smiley. “His name hasn’t come up anywhere else in the investigation.”

“Plug it into the system.”

Sam typed the details in. When the information came up, the DMV photo showed an average-looking white male in hismidtwenties. At five-five, 120pounds, he wasn’t very big. He could be the kid seen in the photo driving the stolen car.

“He certainly isn’t anyone on our radar,” Smiley noted.

Sam ran Collins through wants and warrants. He came up with no record. “Guy’s never been arrested. Not even a traffic ticket.”

Smiley rubbed his chin. “If he didn’t resemble the guy in the composite Logan and the sketch artist worked out, I’d think this was an odd glitch. Now we must see if there is any connection to Sergeant King or her team or Hayes. We’ll have to dig into just who he is.” He paused as if thinking about something, then said, “Run him everywhere and go after social media. Find out all you can about this kid. I’ll call Long Beach and fill them in.”

“I’m on it.”

While Smiley made the call, Sam studied the DMV photo of Collins. The twenty-five-year-old wasn’t anyone who’d stand out in a crowd. He had a plain, average face. Each police database turned up nothing. There were no guns of any kind registered to him, though he could have access to someone else’s guns. Sam went to work checking Collins’s social media accounts.

More of a picture emerged. The kid was smart; he’d graduated early at the top of his high school class. He received an undergraduate degree in computer science from Long Beach State and was doing graduate work at Caltech in Pasadena, a prominent engineering college. But there was no indication he’d finished or was still enrolled. Collins listed his current employment as a tech support company in Signal Hill. Sam pulled up their website and saw it was involved with all kinds of computer repair, networking support, and troubleshooting, just about anything tech related.

There wasn’t much else on social media. The only platform Collins seemed to favor was Facebook. While people could lie onsocial media easily, Sam still believed he could get a feel for someone by what they did post, what was important to them. Collins hadn’t posted anything in three months. Even three months ago, Collins didn’t post a lot, and some of what he did post made no sense to Sam. There were equations, calculations, nothing overtly personal. He liked role-playing video games and talked a bit about different games. Nothing on social media mentioned parents, but Sam found a nod to a brother. Sam felt his pulse quicken. The brother was another avenue to investigate. Dennis posted a heart, saying he would miss his brother, Kent. End of post.

Digging into Kent turned out to be a bit more enlightening.

Big brother, Kent Collins, died a Marine, killed five years ago in Afghanistan in an IED explosion. Kent was someone Sam understood a little better. Patriotic, he enlisted because he felt it was his duty. He obviously loved the Marines and being a part of his unit. They obviously liked him. The remembrance posts after his death were moving. The guy died heroically, falling on an IED and saving the rest of his team. His fellow Marines kept his memory alive. They posted every year on the anniversary of his death.

Kent’s social media page went back eight years and included more posts than Dennis’s. There were old photos showing Kent, fit and strong, wrestling with his smaller brother and dominating him physically. Sam learned the brothers probably didn’t get along very well. Kent referred to him as Dennis the Menace or Little Denny.

Waiting for Little Denny to get his act together. Smart kid but misdirected, face always in his phone.

Dennis the Menace, he hacked his own brother! He poked the bear!

“What do you have, Sam? You look pensive.”

Sam told him. “He fits the definition of loner, wouldn’t you say?” Sam handed Smiley his notes on Collins.

“Especially when it comes to social media, yeah.”

Sam highlighted the number of friends on Collins’s Facebook page—twenty-three. Most of them were involved in the same role-playing games Collins indicated he enjoyed. They posted science fiction stuff and memes about the games. Nothing was real world; some comments were edgy and disrespectful at times, but they all pertained to the games and the death and destruction therein. To Sam, they all appeared to be somewhat immature.

Tame stuff, really. He’d dealt with worse while on the job. He just had never gotten comfortable with any of it. Sam had been raised in church, taught to say “yes sir’” and “yes ma’am” and to respect others.

While the picture he developed of the kid was clearer, it shed no light on the investigation into who shot at Jodie King. What motive could Dennis Collins have to steal a car and attempt to kill a person?

“I just got off the phone with Detective Corson in Long Beach. Collins applied to be an officer there.”

“What?” Sam’s jaw went slack. Collins didn’t appear at all interested in police work or becoming a cop.

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