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Endgame

Page 18

by Jeffrey Round


  “Careful,” Sandra said. “Someone could be hiding in here.”

  She flicked the light on. There was no one else in the room.

  Verna lay spread-eagled on the bed, naked. In her effort to escape, she’d shed her cotton nightie. Her body was covered in red welts, as though she’d been kissed all over. Her bee-stung lips were still proudly full and red. A few of the wasps were still buzzing around. Others lay dying or dead on the bedspread. On the floor beneath the window lay a large papery wasps’ nest.

  They spent a few minutes knocking down the rest of the flying insects before stamping on them and beating them to death.

  Sami Lee looked around. “How did they get in here?”

  Indeed, there was no obvious way in which the wasps might have entered the room. The curtains were pulled back, but the window was bolted from inside.

  “It’s impossible,” Sandra said.

  Check! said the Voice.

  “Stop it,” Pete screamed, clutching his head. “Stop playing this game!”

  Sami Lee and Sandra stared at him.

  “What’s going on?” Sandra said.

  “It won’t stop,” Pete said, with a deranged look on his face. “It’s the Voice. It keeps telling me to look at the chessboard, but I won’t go down there anymore. Why won’t it leave me alone?”

  “Calm down, Pete,” Sami Lee commanded.

  The Voice did not speak again. Pete quieted himself after a few minutes while Sami Lee and Sandra checked to make sure Verna was no longer alive.

  “I was sure it was her,” he said, clutching his head as though he feared the wasps might swarm him next.

  “Well, clearly it wasn’t,” Sami Lee said.

  “What now?” Sandra asked, looking fearfully around.

  Sami Lee gazed at her coldly. “I suggest we all go back to bed and lock our doors and stay there until morning.”

  “But how will we know we’re safe?” Sandra demanded. “Verna was locked in her room and the killer still got to her.”

  Sami Lee nodded. “We will each go downstairs to the kitchen and bring a knife into our room with us. It’s the only way to be sure. Agreed?”

  The other two nodded.

  Together, they tromped down to the kitchen and waited while each selected a weapon, then went warily back up the stairs, trying not to think about the fact that they were all now armed. One by one, they went into their rooms and locked their doors behind them.

  It’s Pete, thought Sami Lee. It’s this crazy Voice he keeps hearing that tells him to kill us. Maybe he doesn’t even know he’s doing it, like some sort of sadistic psycho who turns into a killing machine when his alter ego takes over.

  It’s Sami Lee, Sandra thought. I know Pete sounds crazy, but he’s not really capable of doing anyone any harm. Not when you come down to it. He’s just a neurotic. Or maybe I’m deluding myself.

  Fucking women, Pete thought. It could be either of them. I’ve always had to watch myself around women. First they steal your money, then they stab you in the back and walk out on you.

  It could be both of them, the Voice said.

  Pete was startled. Yes, he thought. They’re probably in it together. He clutched the handle of his knife and held it tightly. If they try to get in here, they’ll get what they deserve.

  Chapter 26

  The three remaining guests woke simultaneously. Sandra lay in bed, not moving. Sami Lee got up and went into her bathroom, staring hard at the bathtub. She’d thought for a long time, as she lay awake, about what she was going to do today. She could wait no longer. She brushed her teeth and washed her face and grimaced at herself in the mirror. She’d once been beautiful, but that was years ago — before the drugs and the parties and the emotional abuse that living with Max had wrought.

  She’d known from the start she could never have him completely. That knowledge had done terrible things to her mind. She hated each and every one of the others who had tried to steal him from her, both men and women. At one point, she’d vowed to take revenge on them all. That was a long time ago. But it had cost her. It aged her and warped her mind till she feared and hated everything that threatened to come between her and Max. So why had she stayed with him all those years? Maybe because after all was said and done, she knew he loved her. Though she had long since stopped loving him. That was the sad part. Now she had nothing left.

  Till now. She smiled to herself. Yes, today was the day. She dressed and got ready for what she knew would be the final day of this long, unending nightmare that had been her life for the past twenty years.

  At eight, the signal was given: three knocks on the heating vent just below ceiling level. It travelled from room to room, as Crispin had said it would on that first horrific afternoon when they knew for sure that the killer was among them.

  One at a time, three doors were unlocked and cautiously opened. Three wary faces peered into the hall and breathed a sigh of relief on seeing their fellow inmates, though it was tempered with the sure knowledge that one of them intended harm toward the other two. If only — if only they could be sure which one. But that, of course, was an impossibility.

  For once, Pete’s Voice had been wrong. There were no changes made to the chessboard when he went downstairs and looked it over.

  “Nine wasps a-stinging.” Pete reached out a finger and tipped over the white queen, leaving three remaining pieces — a queen, a knight, and a pawn — upright on the board.

  The other two watched him.

  He turned to them. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “But it wasn’t me.”

  “Don’t touch that board again,” Sami Lee said.

  They’d been sitting at the table for a while before it registered that the rain had stopped. The sky was overcast with huge, woolly grey clouds moved about by the wind, but there was a calm in the air that hadn’t been there when they went to their rooms the previous night.

  “The fire,” Sandra said. “We can build it today. Someone will come.”

  “Yes,” Sami Lee said. “Let’s do it.”

  They ate quickly then went to the cliffs and began searching for firewood. Everything they found was drenched. In the distance, a fishing trawler went by. They all shouted and waved, but it took no notice.

  “This is nuts,” Sandra told the others. “There’s plenty to burn in the house. I’m going to get something before the boat gets away.”

  “We’ll come with you,” Sami Lee said.

  “No,” Sandra said. “You and Pete stay here and keep waving. I’m faster on my own.”

  She dashed off. Sami Lee looked over at Pete, who glared back at her. She waited.

  “You know, don’t you?” he asked.

  “What do I know? About what you did to Zerin Ames at that party or what you’re going to try to do to me?”

  He held up his hands. “I swear it’s not me, Sami Lee.”

  “Well, I know it’s not me, either, so that makes us even on that score, at least.”

  “Then we agree it’s Sandra?”

  “Or maybe it’s the Voice, Pete. Did you ever think it’s the Voice making you do things? Maybe that’s why you black out and come to again without any memory of what you’ve done.”

  Pete shook his head. “It’s not me. I wish she would hurry up and get back here.” He looked over his shoulder, but Sandra was already out of sight.

  Sandra paused to look up at the house as she approached. The sky was grey and the sea restless, but it was clear the worst was past. Here and there, sunlight shone through the clouds over the water. With any luck, other boats would appear in the morning or later in the afternoon at the latest.

  She took a deep breath and went up to the front door. It’s just an empty house, she told herself. Even if it’s one of them, they’re back there and I’m here alone. You can’t get hurt when you’re alone.
That was when a strange thought occurred to her, but she pushed it to the back of her mind, shaking it off as nonsense.

  Sandra turned the knob. They’d neglected to lock the door when they left. No matter. She went in and looked around to see what would make easy material for burning. As she gathered a few wooden implements and grabbed some old magazines, she felt a sudden shiver, as though she wasn’t alone. She turned and looked over her shoulder. The strange thought she’d had earlier would not leave her.

  Fifteen minutes passed, then a half hour as Sami Lee and Pete waited for Sandra to come back.

  “She’s taking too long,” Pete said. “We’d better go look for her. Who knows what she might be up to. She could have a gun hidden somewhere.”

  “I don’t want to go back in that house,” Sami Lee said.

  “Fine, then I’ll go alone,” Pete said. “Do whatever the fuck you like, Sami Lee, but I’m going to find out what she’s up to.”

  He turned and started to walk toward the house. Sami Lee trailed after him.

  “Don’t go,” she said. “Pete — stop!”

  But Pete continued on up to the house. The front door had been left ajar.

  “Sandra?” he called out.

  There was no answer. Pete went up the steps and looked inside. Steeling his courage, he went in. When he came out again, Sami Lee stood watching him.

  “Did you find her?” Sami Lee asked.

  Pete nodded.

  “And …?”

  “She’d dead.”

  “How can she be …?”

  “She was tucked in her bed. There are purple finger marks on her neck.”

  “Ten stranglers strangling,” Sami Lee said.

  She turned and marched away.

  “Where are you going?” Pete called out, watching the witchy mass of hair flying over her shoulders.

  “As far away from you and this house as possible.”

  “But it can’t have been either of us,” Pete said. “We were both at the cliffs.”

  Sami Lee whirled and angrily confronted him. “So you say! So you say, Pete, but how do I know you didn’t kill her? Or maybe she’s not even dead! Maybe the two of you are waiting for me to go back inside the house so you can both kill me!” She turned and marched down to the cove. Standing on the shore, she desperately scanned the waves for signs of a boat.

  Pete stomped after her and grabbed her arm, pulling her violently around to face him. “I didn’t do this! You know I didn’t!”

  “Back off, Pete. Let go of my arm!”

  “I wasn’t anywhere near the house when Sandra went back in. Isn’t it clear to you there’s got to be someone else here on the island?”

  “There can’t be. We searched everywhere. All I know is, all these years I’ve covered for what you did to that girl at the party. And you and I are the last ones left alive who know about it. You’ve got nothing to lose if you kill me. But that’s not going to happen.”

  Pete looked at her in horror. “Then you know?”

  “I’ve always known. Why do you think I was so anxious not to have the police come to that house? I know you gave her a second tab of ecstasy. I saw you fucking her while she was high on drugs. I watched you screwing her while she wasn’t able to speak or defend herself. It was you, Pete! You ruined everything for everybody.”

  “It’s not true!” he cried. “She was beautiful. She loved me!”

  As he lunged for her, Sami Lee’s arm went out to meet him. She stabbed him once, felt the knife go in, then pulled back and stabbed him a second time. She saw Pete’s surprised expression turn to a twisted sneer as he looked down at his bloody chest.

  “Bitch,” he said.

  He fell to the ground.

  “Now you’re absolved of your sins,” she told him.

  She pulled the knife out. Blood spewed onto the sand from the two gaping wounds in his chest. Pete gave a final gurgling gasp and lay still.

  Chapter 27

  Sami Lee left Pete lying there and went back into the house. They were all gone now, so there was nothing left to fear. The facade of strength she had maintained since Max’s death quickly began to crumble. She went into the bathroom and turned on the water, lit several candles, and ceremoniously laid the knife out on the edge of the tub.

  She looked at herself in the mirror and saw the horrors of flesh staring back at her. She had lived too long. She was fifty-six. Getting old and ugly was not the proper way for the true love of a rock legend to end her life. Therefore, she would die beautifully and make up for the too many years she’d endured in poverty and ignominy. Nothing else could atone for having lived too long except to arrange for a beautiful death. And that was one thing Sami Lee knew well how to do.

  She stripped off her clothes and placed the recorder on the tiles beside the bathtub. She pressed On and slipped into the water. Then, slowly, she began to talk, describing the knife as it cut into her wrists, telling the mechanical ear how quickly the blood ran from the veins as the candles swayed on the far side of the room. She kept talking, describing how the tub filled up with red, as she let the knife drop to the floor, her voice getting weaker and weaker till finally it was heard no more.

  In her last few conscious moments, she thought about Yoko Ono and how she too had been blamed for the end of a legendary band, even blamed for John’s assassination because it was she who had convinced him to move to New York and the Dakota Apartments where he lived out his final days. Would they think it was Sami Lee’s fault for bringing Max to Shark Island? No matter, it couldn’t be helped now. She thought of Janis Joplin’s sad ending in a Hollywood hotel, overdosing on heroin a week after Jimi Hendrix died. She thought of Sid and Nancy, and all the other legends who came to a tragic end. Finally, she thought of Pamela Morrison, another rock widow whose husband had loved and betrayed her with both men and women, as well as drugs, and finally death. Jim too had escaped, leaving Pam behind until she could stand it no more and took her own life. And so Sami Lee said goodbye to this mortal plane, taking with her all her secrets and pains, her private sorrows and memories.

  Some time later, the recording came to an end with a tiny final click. And some time after that, the candles burned down one by one and the room went dark.

  Outside, the sun was shining brightly over the island.

  Chapter 28

  The police report was aided by the tape recorder found beside the bathtub with the body of the dead Asian woman. Narrated at first by a soft male voice, and later by what the police concluded was the voice of the dead woman in the bathtub, it detailed daily events on the island as well as the confessions of eleven people involved in the overdose of a young woman at a house party in Seattle’s market district twenty years before.

  The confessions were first- or at times second-hand accounts, given by the combined group of eleven who expired on the island. (So the police concluded, once the bodies were counted and the names and details of the individuals summed up.) As far as the police were able to determine, all confessions were given freely and of the victims’ own accord. Nothing seemed to have been coerced.

  From what they could tell, the first on the island to die was a Guyanese-born lawyer named Noni Embrem, age forty-eight. His confession consisted of an admission that he had once bribed a drug dealer named Newt Merton to plead no contest to manslaughter charges over the death of a Ladykillers fan after Noni promised Newt he would receive a suspended sentence. Newt accepted the bribe, but went to jail for the crime while the others went free. His death was determined to have been the result of ingesting poison in a cocktail mixed by the retreat’s chef, Jack Edwards.

  Second to die was Janice Sandford, a.k.a. Sarah Wynberg, forty-nine, host of the party where the young fan, Zerin Ames, had been given an overdose of ecstasy. Her confession, not caught on tape but spoken privately to a nurse, concerned the fact that she had been having sex w
ith the dead girl’s date, Spike Anthrax. As a result, no one noticed when the girl went into convulsions caused by the overdose. At the time of the trial, Wynberg denied allegations about her involvement, as well as the involvement of the others in the girl’s death, claiming Ames had left the party with friends. Like Embrem, she, too, had been poisoned, in her case via medication administered by the island nurse, Sandra Goodman. Wynberg’s confession was later narrated and confirmed on tape by Goodman herself.

  As far as could be discerned, the likely third death was that of a forty-seven-year-old man employed to ferry the guests back and forth. He had gone by the name of Jack Edwards, though he had many aliases known to the police. Edwards’s part in Ames’s death occurred when he was unwittingly asked to take her to a hospital in his taxi cab. He was never formally accused in the investigation, although it was on record at the taxi company dispatch that he had dropped Ames off at the emergency ward. Edwards apparently drowned when his boat disintegrated, possibly as a result of the severity of the storm. His may have been the only natural death among the eleven, though given the circumstances of the others, the police were unwilling to rule out homicide.

  A fourth guest, a real-estate agent named David, a.k.a. “Newt” Merton, forty-six, died of electrocution when he attempted to plug in a faulty fridge that had been deliberately tampered with. According to Merton’s confession, both at the trial and on the island, he had supplied the drugs at the party where the girl received a bad dose of ecstasy. In his defence, Merton claimed that another dealer had tampered with his supplies in an attempt to put him out of business.

  The fifth and sixth bodies belonged to rock musicians Max Hardcore and Spike Anthrax, both fifty, and both former members of the punk-rock group known as the Ladykillers. Hardcore died from a suspicious fall over a third-floor railing some time on the night of the third day; his former partner, Spike, died of a lethal injection of methamphetamines the following morning. Their parts in the death of Ames were substantiated on tape as well. Anthrax had invited the girl to the party, but quickly abandoned her for the hostess, Sarah Wynberg. He and Hardcore had apparently been the two men who took the dying Ames out to the taxi operated by Edwards. They left her with Edwards, along with a note saying she had taken an overdose of ecstasy, directing him to take her to the nearest hospital.

 

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