The Guilty Plea by Robert Rotenberg

house, went upstairs to Simon’s room, and then left by the front door. Simon said his mother came in last night when he was in bed and told him she wouldn’t see him for a long time. Everything fit, except this last small bloodstain.
    Zeilinski read his thoughts. “Blood can last long time.”
    “I know,” Greene said.
    “Is not usually last long time in doorway. Especially in such clean house.”
    Greene looked at her and then at Kennicott. They were all thinking the same thing. Had there been a second person in the house, who’d left by the back door?

15
    Jennifer Raglan sprinted up to the crowd of parents waiting calmly in the northwest corner of the suburban parking lot. It was after 12:35, and the heat was radiating up from the black asphalt. A wave of sweat wrapped its way around her body.
    She’d spent the last half hour in her old Saturn, running yellow traffic lights and the occasional near-red one to get here on time. Driving through the city like a maniac wasn’t a great thing for a Crown Attorney to do, but being late for her daughter was a worse option.
    “Don’t worry, the buses are never on time,” a woman with flabby arms, wearing a wide-brimmed hat, said to Raglan. She was sitting in a folding chair with a cup holder, sipping on a frothy-looking iced drink.
    Raglan surveyed the other parents awaiting the buses. The women, with their stylish sunglasses and Capri pants or workout outfits, bespoke summer days lounging on a dock by the still waters of a northern lake. The men, laconic in their button-down shirts, speaking into their cell phones or scrolling through their BlackBerrys, were in no hurry at all. Didn’t any of these people work?
    She’d dug deep into her personal savings to send Dana away—in part to fulfill her daughter’s long-standing wish to go to sleepover camp, in part to buy some time alone with her husband. For ten kid-free days they drove down through Vermont and Massachusetts to Cape Cod and doubled back through upstate New York. They even visited the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Gordon’s long-standing wish.
    As Raglan looked over the huge SUVs and snazzy imported convertibles parked nearby, she heard snippets of conversation: “So frustrating. We have to wait another week to get the indoor motor repaired” …“The screens on the porch were ripped to shreds by that windstorm” … “Do you know someone who’s good with wells?”
    The travails of the rich, Raglan thought as the heat bore down on her. Last week when they were in Provincetown she’d bought a straw hat and wondered if she’d left it in the car. She was about to go back to look when a cheer went up from the parents. Three bulky buses came into view at the far edge of the lot.
    Everyone started waving madly. Even the men put away their cell phones. Raglan stole a look at her watch. It was 12:45. She turned her BlackBerry to vibrate and slid it into her back pocket.
    The BlackBerry was the thing her children hated the most. When she’d returned home, Raglan had sat down with all three of them. “I’m not the head Crown anymore,” she said, putting her hand on a mock Bible, like a witness at one of her trials. “I solemnly swear, I’ll turn the BlackBerry off the moment I walk in the door.”
    The buses pulled up, the doors swung open, and controlled chaos ensued as girl after girl after girl bounded down three sets of stairs. There was no indication which bus held which kids, but the other parents somehow knew where to position themselves. Raglan was left at the back of the crowd. From her vantage point the children all looked the same. For a strange and terrible moment she thought, What if I don’t recognize my own daughter?
    After what seemed a long time, she felt a tug at her sleeve. Leave me alone, was her first thought. There was another tug. She looked down and saw Dana. Impossibly, her daughter was so much taller after three weeks. She wore a scrunched-down white hat and a filthy