Endgame (21 page)

T
he
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.

T
hey'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.

S
andra 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.

S
ami
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.