Clay and I wandered up the road, taking notes and pictures. I knew Jaime wouldn’t accept help if offered; she didn’t even allow onlookers when she was doing the setup work. I guess even seasoned performers can get stage fright, particularly when they aren’t comfortable in a role.

Once Jaime was ready, she called us over and began peeling back the dimensional layers, looking for our lost souls. Less than ten minutes later, she had one: seventy-eight-year-old Irene Ashworth.

Only Jaime could hear Irene, so the conversation was pretty one-sided. After a few minutes of confirming her identity, based on some basic facts we’d gleaned from the newspaper, Jaime was about to let her go.

“Not yet,” Clay said. “Gotta be sure.”

“Sure of what?” Jaime said, whispering so Irene wouldn’t overhear. “You don’t think this could be Jack? But she’s a wom-” She shook her head. “Of all people, I should know better. There’s no reason Jack the Ripper couldn’t be a woman. But she answered the questions right.”

I shook my head. “If she had contact with the real Irene Ashworth in that portal, that wouldn’t be hard. You have to ask her something only someone from our time could answer, like what the Internet is or a DVD.”

“DVD?” Jaime’s voice rose as she laughed. “At her age, we’d be lucky if she knew what a VCR was.” Jaime froze, then turned. “Oh, y-yes, of course you could hear that.”

Pause.

“No, you’re not deaf. I didn’t mean-”

Pause.

“Well, yes, I’m sure the Internet is great for online brokerages and, yes, you’re right, voice-over-Internet protocol must be a cheaper way to talk to the grandkids…”

Strike missing person number one off the list.

“There’s another one already,” Jaime said. “I wish trolling for ghosts was this easy. Okay, here he comes…Got a male. Midthirties. He’s almost here…”

While the description sounded promising for Jack the Ripper, it also matched that of the second missing person, Kyle Belfour, the thirty-six-year-old systems analyst who lived one block over and had vanished while jogging. Initial probing suggested the spirit was Belfour, but Jaime ran into some difficulties with the questioning.

“We just need your name and some basic-”

Pause.

“To confirm your identity-”

Pause.

“Why do we need to confirm it?”

She looked back at us for help. I murmured a suggestion.

“Right,” she said. “Because, when we pull you out of there, we need to be sure it really is you.”

Pause.

“Who else could it be? Er, well…”

“Just tell him to answer the damned questions,” Clay said. “Or we’ll leave him in there.”

Jaime started to respond, then stopped. “Government conspiracy? Uh, no, this isn’t-”

Pause.

“No, it’s not part of a military test either.”

Pause.

“Well, yes, I suppose sending enemies of the state into a dimensional holding cell wouldn’t be such a bad idea, but neither the CIA or the mil-”

“CSIS,” I said.

She looked over her shoulder at me.

“In Canada, it’s not the CIA. Remind him that if this was a Canadian intelligence or military operation, it would have to have been dreamed up by CSIS and funded with our military budget.”

She did.

After a moment, she said, “Well, yes, I suppose that is kind of funny.”

Pause.

“No, no, don’t apologize. You’ve been under a lot of stress. Now, if you could just tell us-”

Pause.

“An American-designed-and-funded experiment? Using hapless Canadian citizens?”

She looked back at us. Clay rolled his eyes.

We never did get Belfour to admit to his name. It didn’t matter. After ten minutes of spouting a conspiracy diatribe on the growing U.S. military power under Bush, sprinkled with references to CIA mind control experiments, The Manchurian Candidate, and even an X-Files nod, we knew our guy was from the twenty-first century. We gave him the same reassurances we’d given Mrs. Ashworth, then let him slide back to his dimensional holding cell.

By that time, we’d started to attract notice from the neighbors. I’d fielded a few questions while Jaime had been listening to Belfour, cutting off the onlookers’ approach before they got close enough to hear her arguing with herself. After she sent Belfour back and started trolling again, Clay and I took our show on the road, taking pictures as I played reporter and asked questions of the curious. Ask the right questions, and you can get rid of people pretty fast. Once the first wave had retreated to their homes, I slid over to Jaime.

“Any luck?” I whispered.

“I’m…not sure. I’m picking up one more presence, and I think it’s male…”

“Could be our boy. Is he playing shy?”

“Seems more confused.”

“Not surprising if he’s been in there for over a hundred years.”

“I’m trying to lure him over. There-He sees me. He’s coming this way. Yep, it’s a man, maybe late fifties…Here he comes. Showtime.”

Lyle Sanderson, sixty-one, claimed to have been walking his dog the evening before when “everything went black.” Very suspicious…except that he’d answered all our test questions about the twenty-first century with flying colors. A quick query to the next onlooker who’d popped from her house confirmed that a man named Lyle Sanderson lived just down the road…and that a neighbor had found his dog running free last night.

Jaime continued hunting for another person inside the portal, but finally, she shook her head.

“Empty,” she said.

“So Hull ’s lying.”

“Or Jack the Ripper is somewhere else. But he’s not here, and that means he’s not getting out.”

I glanced at the hairline crack in the road, where everything started. “The door going the other way is still open, though, isn’t it? More people can go through. Like Lyle Sanderson.”

“It’s not easy. You have to hit just the right spot, at just the right angle. Think of how many people have walked across it in the last few days. Only three went through. You could probably stroll over there and dance on it, and nothing would happen.” She looked at the crack again. “Though I wouldn’t recommend it…”

Clay shook his head and walked toward the sidewalk.

“They won’t…remember any of this, right?” I said. “Being in the portal, talking to you…?”

“Nada. Just like that Hull guy. He only remembers going in and coming out, which makes me think that part of his story is true.”

“And the rest?”

She shrugged. “I haven’t met the guy, but this business about feeling a ‘pull’ from the zombie controller?” She shook her head and adjusted her oversized purse. “I told Jeremy I think that’s bullshit-if Hull didn’t die, then he’s not a zombie, so he has no connection to any controller. But, like Jeremy said, it can’t hurt to try.”

“Time to call and see how it’s going.”

“Hold on,” I said to Jeremy. “There’s a police car whipping up Yonge. I can’t hear you.”

He waited a second, then said, “We’re over-”

“Wait, got another one.”

“I can hear the sirens. How much trouble did you three cause?”

“Very funny.”

“We’re near Bay and Gerrard if you want to take a cab over.”

“It’s close enough to walk. How did it go with Hull?”

Silence.

“He’s standing right there, isn’t he?” I said. “Did he lead you on a wild goose chase?”

“So it would seem.”

“We’ll be right there.”

I called Rita Acosta, a reporter I’d known at Focus Toronto. She now worked at the Sun, and we still traded the occasional lead. Now, though, I needed to check on Lyle Sanderson, make sure he was really missing.