AWhen Detective Rousch (Rif Hutton) learns that a high concentration of Demerol was found in David's blood, he begins to doubt Tess' story, but when he goes to her hospital room to speak with her, Tess is missing. Meanwhile at the apartment, Holly opens the suitcase stored under Tess' bed, and finds several newspaper clippings and death notices as well as a photo of David. She searches the storage locker in the basement and discovers Jan's body stuffed into a trunk. She rushes back up to the apartment to make a phone call, but Tess has cut the phone line and is waiting for her with a knife. Tess offers to take away Holly's pain on the condition that they commit suicide together. She makes Holly get into the bathrub, but Holly turns the knife on Tess, stabbing her. Holly runs to the elevator just as Rousch exits it. Tess knocks out Rousch, and Holly picks up Rousch's gun and shoots Tess. 'I love you,' Tess says with her dying breath. In the final sscene, Holly and David are looking at a new apartment together. Holly peeks into the bathroom and notices a razor blade on the sink. She picks it up and hears Tess saying, 'You saw it in my eyes, didn't you...that moment of understanding.' Holly drops the razor blade and turns to David. Taking a glance back at the blade, Holly says, 'Let's take it.'
AThe ending is, indeed, ambiguous with Holly picking up and staring at that razor blade. Consequently, viewers have come up with several ways to interpret the final scenes. One possibility is that Holly saw, as Tess said, the 'moment of understanding' in Tess' eyes and that Holly intends to finally end her own pain by committing suicide. Others think that she will step into Tess' shoes and start 'helping' other pained individuals to die. Still others disagree with those interpretations and think that Holly was happy at the end and intended to move in with David and leave both the pain and the killings behind her. How the ending is to be interpreted is up to each viewer to decide.