“I have to go now. Is there anything you want?”
“Nothing, thanks.”
“Goodbye then, Mr. Hill.”
The door shut.
George Hill stood up on the chair, his hands twisting together, wet, outside the window bars. A red light burned in the wall suddenly. A voice came over the audio: “Mr. Hill, your wife is here to see you.”
He gripped the bars.
> She’s dead, he thought.
“Mr. Hill?” asked the voice.
“She’s dead. I killed her.”
“Your wife is waiting in the anteroom, will you see her?”
“I saw her fall, I shot her, I saw her fall dead!”
“Mr. Hill, do you hear me?”
“Yes!” he shouted, pounding at the wall with his fists. “I hear you. I hear you! She’s dead, she’s dead, can’t she let me be! I killed her, I won’t see her, she’s dead!”
A pause. “Very well, Mr. Hill,” murmured the voice.
The red light winked off.
Lightning flashed through the sky and lit his face. He pressed his hot cheeks to the cold bars and waited, while the rain fell. After a long time, a door opened somewhere onto the street and he saw two caped figures emerge from the prison office below. They paused under an arc light and glanced up.
It was Katie. And beside her, Leonard Phelps.
“Katie!”
Her face turned away. The man took her arm. They hurried across the avenue in the black rain and got into a low car.
“Katie!” He wrenched at the bars. He screamed and beat and pulled at the concrete ledge. “She’s alive! Guard! Guard! I saw her! She’s not dead, I didn’t kill her, now you can let me out! I didn’t murder anyone, it’s all a joke, a mistake, I saw her, I saw her! Katie, come back, tell them, Katie, say you’re alive! Katie!”
The guards came running.
“You can’t kill me! I didn’t do anything! Katie’s alive, I saw her!”
“We saw her, too, sir.”
“But let me free, then! Let me free!” It was insane. He choked and almost fell.
“We’ve been through all that, sir, at the trial.”
“It’s not fair!” He leaped up and clawed at the window, bellowing.
The car drove away, Katie and Leonard inside it. Drove away to Paris and Athens and Venice and London next spring and Stockholm next summer and Vienna in the fall.
“Katie, come back, you can’t do this to me!”
The red taillights of the car dwindled in the cold rain. Behind him, the guards moved forward to take hold of him while he screamed.
Some Live Like Lazarus