Edwards had hidden all the others in a locked cupboard in the kitchen where I stored a quantity of oxalic acid, which I fully intended the others to find along with the cellphones, minus the batteries. This last point nearly proved Edwards’s undoing, as Max Hardcore was outside smoking a joint when the otherwise redoubtable Edwards went out into the rain to toss the batteries into the cove. Max eventually decided what he had seen was not Edwards, but Keill, already on the island. This, in fact, served my purpose just as well, for it instilled fear in the others. Later, when it was clear that Harvey wasn’t on the island, Max decided it was the stray dog Spike had seen on his first search of the grounds.
But back to Edwards. Despite what the others believed, he was the fourth to die, in accordance with the song’s lyrics (“four oceans to drown in”), though his body was not discovered till the following day. During a break in the proceedings, I was able to sneak down to the boathouse under cover of darkness and splash a quantity of glue-destroying acid on the bottom of the boat. Since the storm had deposited a considerable amount of water in the vessel, and as Edwards was in a panic when he left, he wouldn’t have realized until he was some way out into the ocean where the waves were strongest that the boat was literally disintegrating around him. I’m sure his last moments were particularly unpleasant when he realized he’d been tricked into killing himself by abandoning the others, just as he once abandoned Zerin Ames. More poetry.
David “Newt” Merton was next on my list. A near-fatal accident by one of the construction workers provided the key to his death, when I discovered how easy it was to rig an electrical receptacle to make it deadly. Newt accommodated my wishes by plugging the refrigerator back in without taking time to note that the receptacle was faulty. If he had seen the pair of rubber dish gloves on the counter where I left them when I unplugged it, he might have thought twice before grabbing the plug, but he was not particularly observant.
In his younger days, Newt was known for taking chances. He once jumped, while stoned, from the balcony of a twenty-sixth-story apartment across to another railing some four feet away, and then back again. He was a reckless, devil-may-care sort, but this was one live-wire act he didn’t survive. If he’d had any decency, he would have tried his supposedly “quality” drugs himself before selling them. Zerin Ames may not have been his only victim, but we may never know of the others who suffered because of his carelessness. To him was bequeathed the gift of “five tongues of fire.”
Max always wanted to be a high-flyer, so I gave him his wish to attain the heights once more before he died. His “six bombers diving” was a short-lived flight, however. In fact, I wasn’t sure if three stories would be adequate to do him in, but with his weight he hit the floor rather hard. It was unnecessary for me to go downstairs to complete the job. In fact, I had just come up from changing the chessboard once again. That was the most dangerous moment of the entire plan, for in my near-blindness I had knocked over a vase, which shattered rather loudly on the floor. Still, I accomplished what I needed to without being discovered.
With Max dead, I wanted Spike to follow soon thereafter. The poetic justice of the pair dying in close proximity was too much to resist. I simply waited till I had a chance to drug the bowl of cocaine to knock him out. (He’d used it several times and got sloppy, thinking it safe.) I then crept up behind him and stabbed him in the jugular with one of my insulin needles, the “seven crystals shining,” except that it contained a highly lethal mix of crystal meth cut with Drano. I’d had vague qualms about whether or not I would be able to see him well enough to do this, but in fact his tell-tale green hair made it easy to locate him, even when the rest of him was little more than a blurry outline to my dying eyes.
At this point, with the paranoia setting in, things got trickier. The connection between the chess game (my favourite board game) and the murders was by now all too obvious. (Pete was good at keeping the others informed, thanks to his private inner voices.) There was still some doubt about the connection to the song’s lyrics, however. If the survivors had looked a little more closely at the words, it might have given them greater insight into what fate would befall them.
With my own “death” imminent, the timing of everything that followed was crucial. In the course of my investigations, I had discovered a book by a Canadian researcher who claimed that stories of zombies in the Caribbean islands were indeed based on fact. I paid a good deal to discover the right amount of the various compounds used, including the venom from a blowfish, among other ingredients designed to stop all outward signs of bodily activity for a short period of time. This required an extremely careful setup, as I first had to take a potentially lethal dosage of the drug.
Immediately prior, I swallowed a quantity of charcoal and ash made from burned fish bones, which had caused some consternation on its discovery in the kitchen around the time Spike Anthrax died. This was intended as part of the resuscitation process, helping to remove the poison by absorbing toxic materials in the body. I then swallowed a lethal dose of the blowfish venom, which made me seem to be having an insulin reaction. At the same time, I convinced Sandra to inject me with an antidote that I had placed in the emergency medical kit. This allowed me to appear dead for several hours. That way, I was fairly sure, I would awaken in due course after my “eight poisoned needles,” as I in fact did.
Verna Temple’s death proved one of my greatest challenges and biggest triumphs. I knew she was allergic to wasps, and so I enticed a hive to build in my eaves last summer. At the time of building, I had the workers put in an access point to the vent in Verna’s room, connecting it with my own, right next door. At night, when I was in my element, so to speak, I was able to manoeuvre the nest into Verna’s room. Being woken so discourteously, the “nine wasps a-stinging” were no doubt eager to wreak revenge on the nearest target, in this case, Verna. From the little I could see, the marks on her body were quite in keeping with her various enhancement surgeries, particularly her “bee-stung lips.” By the time the others had broken down the door, the deed was done.
While the others believed Sandra’s injection the previous day had killed me, it in fact saved my life. I returned the favour by strangling her the following morning when she came to check on my “dead” body. Although I’d shown all the obvious signs of death, I knew that Sandra, being a nurse, would eventually start to get curious after realizing another person had to be on the island. That person, in fact, was me. As Sandra leaned over me to check for signs of breathing, I reached up and throttled her, then laid her out on her own bed for the others to find. “Ten stranglers strangling.”
From then on, it was simply a matter of time before Pete and Sami Lee turned on one another. They shared a life-long hatred, and leaving them to deal with each other at the end pleased me a great deal. From the upstairs window, I followed their movements down by the water. I watched as Pete returned to the house and discovered Sandra’s body. He reported this to Sami Lee, who by then was convinced that her arch-enemy Pete was the real killer. With his crazy voices, he was a natural for the role. “Eleven stabbers stabbing.”
I’m not sure which of them I despised most, in fact. Pete for giving Zerin Ames the drug overdose and later raping her while she lay dying, or Sami Lee for her selfish decision to hide the truth from the world.
After that, it was simply a matter of waiting. I knew that without Max, Sami Lee would kill herself. “Twelve suicides.” If she hadn’t, I would happily have done it for her. I have said that my blindness enhanced my sense of smell. It also enhanced my hearing. It was pure serendipity when I heard the knife she used to slit her wrists fall on the bathroom mat, which I was able to retrieve under the sill. I was also able to listen as, true to her controlling nature, Sami Lee did a superb job of having the last word — apart from this one, of course.
Later, I took the knife Sami Lee stabbed Pete with and went back out to give him the final blow. I felt it was my due. How I wish
it had been the killing blow, but it was a symbolic victory at least, to stab him in the back and leave his body on the beach with the knife embedded in his flesh.
How confusing that will be for the local police force when they discover that the last one standing was not the killer of all those who died before her, but merely the killer of the one person she hated most.
As for myself, I have little time left no matter the outcome. The retina blastoma that has destroyed my eyesight has since spread to my other organs. I have at best only a month or two before I’ll die of natural causes. Ending things this way, I feel, is far superior.
I have just reset the twelve chess pieces on the board. In a few moments, once I send this email off to my publishers, I will tie a sock as a tourniquet around my left leg and inject myself with an overdose of insulin, retrieved from my computer bag. (In case you’re wondering, I hid it underneath Spike’s dead body. It was slim enough that no one noticed it there.) As a final gesture of defiance, I will throw the used syringe at the door opposite mine, Spike’s room. With any luck, it will hang quivering on the door, where no doubt the police will find it when they arrive.
At that time, my deeds all but over, I will lie down on my bed and release the tourniquet, one white sock, which will not look too out of place along with everything else lying scattered around me. Having accomplished that, I will breathe my last.
And so, my friends, that is the end of the sad saga of the Ladykillers and one of the final chapters of punk-rock music.
I hereby bid you adieu.
Yours faithfully,
Crispin LaFey
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, I offer thanks to the ever-resourceful Dame Agatha Christie for the endless hours of fascination and bloodless detection her ingenuity has provided me and countless other readers. I would be remiss not to say thanks once again to my illustrious editor, Shannon Whibbs, whose suggestions always help to “enhance the natural.” Cheers also to Allison Hirst, James Hatch, Laura Boyle, Synora Van Drine, and all the good folks at Dundurn who make my job pretty cool. A nod goes out to Ryan McConnell, Erin Howe, and members of that fab band, These Electric Lives, whose hijinks set my inspiration buzzing, as well as to Shane McConnell, David Tronetti, and Enrique García-Pereña.
Also by Jeffrey Round
Lake on the Mountain
A Dan Sharp Mystery
Winner of the 2013 Lambda Award for Best Gay Mystery
Dan Sharp, a gay father and missing- persons investigator, accepts an invitation to a wedding on a yacht in Ontario’s Prince Edward County. It seems just the thing to bring Dan closer to his noncommittal partner, Bill, a respected medical professional with a penchant for sleazy after-hours clubs, cheap drugs, and rough sex. But the event doesn’t go exactly as planned. When a member of the wedding party is swept overboard, a case of mistaken identity leads to confusion as the wrong person is reported missing. The hunt for a possible killer leads Dan deeper into the troubled waters and private lives of a family of rich WASPs and their secret world of privilege. No sooner is that case resolved when a second one ends up on Dan’s desk. Dan is hired by an anonymous source to investigate the disappearance, twenty years earlier, of the groom’s father. The only clues are a missing bicycle and six horses mysteriously poisoned.
Pumpkin Eater
A Dan Sharp Mystery
In the second Dan Sharp Mystery, missing-persons investigator Dan Sharp makes a grisly find in a burned-out slaughterhouse in Toronto’s west end after following an anonymous tip. Someone is targeting known sex offenders whose names and identities were released on the Internet. When an iconic rock star contacts Dan to keep from becoming the next victim, things take a curious turn. Dan’s search for a killer takes him underground in Toronto’s broken social scene — a secret world of misfits and guerrilla activists living off the grid — where he hopes to find the key to the murders.
The Jade Butterfly
A Dan Sharp Mystery
A seemingly casual encounter in a downtown bar sends missing-persons investigator Dan Sharp in search of a woman presumed dead in the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Twenty years after her disappearance, her brother believes that a woman he glimpsed on the Internet is his sister, now living in Toronto. The closer Dan gets to finding her, however, the less sense things make. Just when he thinks he knows what’s driving his client, an unexpected revelation forces him to choose between what he’s been told and his gut instinct, which says things are not all they seem.
Copyright © Jeffrey Round, 2016
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Editor: Shannon Whibbs
Design: Laura Boyle
Cover Design: Laura Boyle
Epub Design: Carmen Giraudy
Image Credits: © Lucky Team Studio/ shutterstock.com
Author Photo: © Michael Erickson
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Round, Jeffrey, author
Endgame / Jeffrey Round.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-4597-3325-1 (paperback).--ISBN 978-1-4597-3326-8 (pdf).-- ISBN 978-1-4597-3327-5 (epub)
I. Title.
PS8585.O84929E53 2016 C813’.54 C2015-906344-2
C2015-906345-0
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and Livres Canada Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.
J. Kirk Howard, President
The publisher is not responsible for websites or their content unless they are owned by the publisher.
Visit us at: Dundurn.com | @dundurnpress | Facebook.com/dundurnpress | Pinterest.com/dundurnpress
Endgame Page 20
