“The information was never entered?” I asked.
“No, we have the Mouse Killer on file,” Nancy answered. “But the information has disappeared. It might be a problem with our system, though we haven’t lost anything else.”
I knew it wasn’t a problem with Nancy’s system or a mistake of another employee. When I called the third mooring company—the one along the canal where the Mouse Killer had recently disappeared from—they encountered the same problem: any information on the Mouse Killer had mysteriously vanished from their records.
“Something’s up,” I said, hanging up with the third company. “The owner of the Mouse Killer must have the ability to get into these companies’ record systems. There’s no explanation for why else his details would be erased from all three moorings.”
“It checks out,” Evelyn said. “Think about the CCTV issues the police have been having.”
“The killer has a hacking background,” I concluded. “He was able to delete the footage from the murders and alter the footage from the night I was in Mitre Square!” I gasped with the excitement of a breakthrough. “No wonder no one’s been able to track him down! He’s erased himself from cyberspace.”
“Yet another piece of an unfinished puzzle,” Evelyn said. “We still have to figure out who owns that boat. Think we can track it down?”
She adjusted her shoulder sling and winced. She’d lost a bit of color from her cheeks too. I recognized the signs of her overexertion.
“No,” I said firmly. “Let’s go home.”
While Evelyn rested, I collected all the pieces of my investigation, beginning with my first night in London. From there, I went over every single detail one more time. I reread theories and skimmed books. I re-watched documentaries and recorded discussions between professional historians and detectives. I refreshed my memory on the original Ripper case, determined to find the one detail that would connect the Mouse Killer to the Whitechapel murders. At three o’clock in the morning, I finally discovered it.
“Mary Pearcey!” I shouted, stomping into the bedroom.
Evelyn, dead asleep, woke with a startled yelp. She rubbed her eyes. “What are you talking about?”
I leapt onto the bed and set my laptop on her blanket to show her the article I found. “Mary Pearcey is one of the original Ripper suspects because she murdered her lover’s wife and child in a similar way. When the police tried to question her about the blood on the walls of the house, she told them she was trying to kill mice. Get it?”
“The mouse killer,” Evelyn muttered sleepily. “I get it. But who owns the boat?”
“Someone who thinks Mary Pearcey was the real Ripper,” I said. “Someone who believed a woman was capable of those murders. Someone deep in Ripper lore.”
A loud knock startled both of us. Evelyn grabbed her bedside baton and peered past me.
“Who would come here at three o’clock in the morning?” I whispered.
Evelyn slipped out from beneath the covers, put on her slippers, and crept from the room. She held the baton aloft. I followed her to the living room, where she stopped to stare at something on the floor.
Someone had slid a letter beneath the flat’s door. I stooped to pick it up and opened it.
“From Hell,” I read, my heart pounding. “Dear Miss Frye. Your investigations have caused me a fair amount of trouble. I feel it is only appropriate to reward you for your admirable attempts to identify me. Meet me at Miller’s Court off Dorset Street at midnight on November ninth. I trust you know where that is. Signed, the Ripper.”
20
“You can’t go.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s an invitation to your own death, Jack!”
We stood on opposite sides of the kitchen island, as we had done for the last several days while we argued about the same subject over and over. It was November eighth. That night, I had a date with the Ripper.
Evelyn’s voice trembled with fear and anger that she tried to keep hidden. “I thought we talked about this. Go to the police. Show them the letter. Let them meet the Ripper tonight.”
“We tried that with the kidney,” I reminded her. “Look what happened. They never followed up with the lead, and the killer is still on the loose. If I don’t go tonight, he’s going to pick someone else. I have a responsibility.”
“To do what?” she challenged. “Sacrifice yourself?”
“I don’t plan to die tonight, Ev.”
She sank onto a stool and rested her forehead in her hands. “I wish I’d never invited you here. If I’d let Wagner assign some random nurse to take care of me two months ago, we wouldn’t be in this position.”
“There’s no turning back time,” I said. “You can look at it that way, but I see things from a different perspective. Maybe I was meant to be here in Whitechapel when all of this stuff was happening.”
“That’s bollocks, and you know it. Fate isn’t real.”
I shrugged. “That’s what you choose to believe. I’m meeting the Ripper tonight whether you like it or not. If you want to go to the cops, be my guest.”
Evelyn groaned and banged her forehead on the counter. “I literally can’t let you go, Jack. I will tie you to the bed before I allow you to leave here and get yourself killed.”
I picked up a bright-red apple and bit into it with a loud crunch. “Sounds kinky.”
She gave me a sour look. “I’m serious. Drop it.”
I lifted the apple in a gesture of innocence. “Fine. It’s dropped, but only if you make me a promise.”
“It’s never straightforward with you, is it?”
“If the Ripper kills someone else tonight, I’m not leaving London until he’s caught,” I said. “I don’t care if your shoulder miraculously heals tomorrow. You’re stuck with me until the police have the killer in custody.” I thought it’d be a no-brainer for
