I was still staring at the photo on the screen. The Ripper had a name—Alexander Newman. In life, he smiled.

“Rory,” Stephen asked, “are you sure that’s him?”

I was sure.

“She’s right,” Boo said, leaning in and staring at the photo. “I didn’t even recognize him. I mostly remember him throwing me into the bloody road. But she’s right.”

“This changes things,” Stephen said. “He’s playing a game with us. It’s just after two, so we have two hours.”

He paced the study room for a moment. There was a knock on the door. He threw it open to find Claudia in the doorway.

“Yes?” he snapped.

“All right in here?” she asked.

“Just doing some follow-up questioning,” he said.

Claudia didn’t look convinced. Now that I thought about it—Stephen really did look young, and he’d been around a lot. I don’t think she questioned that he was a policeman, but I’m not sure she was completely convinced that he was around the building purely for police reasons.

“I see,” she replied. “Well, make sure to pop by on your way out, please.”

“Yes, I will,” Stephen said quickly. “Thank you.”

He didn’t exactly slam the door in her face, but he came fairly close.

“We do two things,” he said. “We make him think that Rory will meet him. We’ll draw him away from here. The second thing is, we get Rory out of this building without anyone noticing.”

“Why?” Boo asked.

“Because,” he said impatiently, “before, we thought he was just going to come here and we’d be waiting. But now I have no idea where he plans on going or what he plans on doing. So our move is, we confuse him. He’s been in control of this situation for so long, I can’t imagine he’ll be pleased if he thinks he doesn’t know what’s going on for a moment. Is there any other way out of this building besides the front door?”

“The only other way I know is through the bathroom window,” I said. “And they fixed the bars.”

“You can’t go out a window. This building is surrounded. The police would notice, even if the Ripper missed it. No other way?”

I shook my head.

“All right,” he said. “The two of you stay here. I’ll be back.”

Stephen was gone for about ten minutes. Jo came by on a break from patrolling the building, and Boo told her what was going on, so she stayed with us. When Stephen returned he had a plastic shopping bag with him, which he tossed onto the table. The bag had one busted handle and looked dirty, like it had come from the trash. Inside, there was a lump of black and white cloth and a very bright green plastic object.

“Put that on,” he said.