Chapter 157: The Name Daniel

Winston had been to the police station enough times at this point that the woman at the front desk knew his coffee order. She hadn't offered to get it for him, but she knew it.

He was on his fourth visit this week. The investigator, a man named Garth Pulaski, came out of the hallway offices looking like the job had recently gotten heavier.

"You again," Pulaski said.

"Still me," Winston agreed.

Pulaski had a folder this time, which was new. Usually, he came out empty-handed and delivered nothing in a calm, professional tone. The folder meant something.

They sat across from each other at the small table near the window, not an interrogation room, just a table.

"We ran a deeper background on your friend Oliver Clarke," Pulaski said.

"Okay."

"There are inconsistencies."

Winston leaned forward slightly. "What kind of inconsistencies?"

Pulaski opened the folder but didn't turn it to show him. The move of a man who had learned to control the pace of information. "The kind that suggests Oliver Clarke may not be the name he was born with."

The room was quiet. Somewhere down the hall, a phone rang twice and stopped.

Winston sat back. "That's—I mean, people change their names. I mean—do you mean like a nickname?"

"It's not just the name." Pulaski's tone was the same. "It's the paper trail. Social security number that traces back correctly until a certain point and then stops. Educational records that are technically verifiable but have small gaps. The kind of gaps that aren't obvious unless you're specifically looking."

"And you were specifically looking."

"We are now."

Winston rubbed the back of his neck. He had a very specific feeling sitting in his chest. Oliver, who brought him coffee from the place across the street. Oliver, who had once driven forty minutes out of his way to drop Winston home during a bad drinking night out. Oliver, whose name was apparently not entirely Oliver.

"Do you have a real name?" Winston asked.

Pulaski considered him for a moment. "We have a possible one. We're still confirming."

"Can you tell me what it is?"

"Not yet."

Winston nodded. He pressed his palms flat on the table. "Okay. What can you tell me?"

"That the investigation has changed shape," Pulaski said. "And that anything you know about Oliver Clarke, his habits, his history, anything he told you about his background — all of it is now relevant."

Winston thought about every conversation he'd had with Oliver over the years he’d known him. Oliver talked about growing up in upstate New York, a father who was strict and a mother who read constantly. Oliver said he'd studied computer science because it seemed like the kind of degree that led somewhere, and he'd wanted somewhere to lead.

How much of that was real? The question sat in his head like something with weight.

"I need to think," Winston said.

"Take your time." Pulaski closed the folder. "But come back."

Winston sat in his car in the parking lot of the police station for twenty-two minutes. He knew it was twenty-two minutes because he checked his phone at the start and then again when he finally started the engine.

He drove home. He dropped his keys on the counter and opened his laptop at the kitchen table without taking his jacket off.

He typed Oliver Clarke into the search bar. He'd done this before—everyone had, after the disappearances hit the news. But he'd been looking at it differently then, looking for news, for updates, for something that would tell him his friend was okay. Now he was looking at it like a different question.

The news articles first. Photos of Oliver—the company headshot from Pixel Ledger's website and a few candid ones that had surfaced from coworkers. Winston had stared at these before. He scrolled past them.

He pulled up Oliver's social media profile, which had been dormant since before the disappearance. He went back through it slowly in a way he didn't usually bother to be.

Oliver had been a sporadic poster at best, occasional photos, mostly places and re-posts rather than people. Once, memorably, a photo of a particularly ugly piece of public art with the caption "Whoever approved this should answer for it."

Winston had liked that one.

He kept scrolling. Three years back, then four. The posts got sparser. Oliver hadn't been particularly online before Pixel Ledger. Winston had always assumed that was just personality, some people weren't. Now it read differently.

He nearly missed it.

A photo from five years ago. A guy who looked very much like Oliver at what looked like a work function, the background blurred, the image slightly low quality in the way photos from five years ago sometimes were. He was smiling at something off-camera, that particular easy smile Winston knew, the one that made people feel like they were the only person in the room.

The photo wasn't the thing.

The tag was the thing.

The tag was attached to a different name. Winston stared at it for a moment, parsing what he was seeing. The account it linked to was private and long inactive, but the tag was still there, just sitting in the metadata of a five-year-old photo like a loose thread no one had thought to pull.

Daniel.

Not a last name. Just Daniel.

Winston read it three more times. His chest had gone very still in a way that had nothing to do with breathing.

He studied Oliver’s face in the photo—blue hair, longer, with braces and glasses—but the smile was the same.

He closed the laptop and sat at his kitchen table with his jacket still on and thought about the thing Pulaski had said.

He pulled his phone out and called Pulaski. It rang twice.

"I think I found something," Winston said when Pulaski picked up. "A tag. Old social media post. A different name."

A brief pause. "What name?"

"Daniel."

"Come back in tomorrow morning," he said. "First thing."

"What does it mean?" Winston asked. "The name. Does it mean something to you?"

"It might," he said. "I'll know more in the morning."

He hung up.

Winston set his phone face down on the table. He looked at the closed laptop. He thought about Oliver's desk at Pixel Ledger—the coffee mug with the dried ring inside it, still sitting there the last time Winston had gone in to collect a few things. No one had moved it.

Daniel.

Oliver had mentioned some kind of volunteer work once. He didn’t go into detail—just said he helped out on weekends. Winston hadn’t thought much of it. It sounded normal, like a food bank or something.

The thought came back to him slowly. Then he pushed his chair back and stood, walking over to the window. Outside, everything looked the same—cars passing, lights coming on, nothing out of place.

He tried to remember exactly what Oliver had said, but it was all blurry. That’s the thing with those kinds of conversations; you don’t really hold on to them.