Dream Wheels by Richard Wagamese

the hour. There was another knock, more insistent, and she reached for the cold cream and spread it heavily around her eyes and along her cheeks to cover as much of the bruising as she could before she ran in small, mincing steps down the hallway to the door.
    “Who is it?” she asked.
    “Police” was all she heard.
    She leaned against the door frame and closed her eyes. She pulled the robe closer to her. “What is it?” she asked.
    “Mrs. Hartley? Please open the door.”
    She was surprised to hear her name and she took a deep breath and patted the cream in again before she slid the bolt free and opened the door. A plainclothes officer held up a badge. There were two uniforms with him.
    “It’s Aiden, isn’t it?” Claire asked.
    “Yes,” the plainclothes officer said. “I’m Marcel Golec, Youth Division. You’re Mrs. Hartley?”
    “Miss.”
    “Well, Miss Hartley, we need to talk.”
    “Now? It’s late.” Claire looked about nervously and hoped that Eric wouldn’t be awakened by the intrusion. She nodded, and Golec quietly told the two uniforms to wait outside.
    Claire showed him to a chair. “What is it? What’s happened?”
    “There’s been a shooting,” Golec said. Claire slumped down heavily in the chair opposite him and the shock on her face made Golec wish he’d made a more delicate opening. “A robbery,” he continued, “with a handgun.”
    “Aiden,” Claire said. She spoke the name with regret and a woe Golec could feel.
    “No,” he said. “A boy named Cort Lehane. Do you know him?”
    “Cort? Cort is Aiden’s best friend. They met at the youth centre. Cort’s been shot?”
    “The boy’s seriously injured. Two officers stumbled on him trying to hold up a girl making a night deposit. He fired at them. There wasn’t anything else they could do.”
    Golec watched the news begin to sink in. “Are you saying Aiden was with him? Is that it?”
    “No,” Golec said. “He wasn’t there. But the boy claims the gun belonged to Aiden. That he’d given it to him and told him how to do the robbery.”
    “No.”
    “It’s what he says, and if it checks out we have to charge Aiden with accessory, maybe conspiracy to commit.”
    “Conspiracy? He’s fifteen,” Claire said. “That’s ridiculous.”
    “Sounds ridiculous,” Golec said, “but the fact is that there’s a kid in intensive care right now with a bullet hole in him, a young girl with a trauma counsellor and two officers mighty shook up about firing at a kid. Ridiculous maybe, but true nonetheless. Where is Aiden right now?”
    “In his room.”
    “Can you check?”
    “Yes.”
    Golec watched her walk away. She was small and pretty under the heavy splash of cold cream and he wondered about the bruises. The split lip told him all he needed to know. The outline was always the same and the story of the kids never altered much. Even sumptuous surroundings like this proved to him that all the money in the world couldn’t purchase a safe home or guarantee a child’s immunity from the effects of grown-up immaturity. The non sequitur irked him.
    Claire walked back into the living room with a sleepy-eyed Aiden right behind her. He didn’t exactly fit the image of a gangster awaiting the outcome of a heist, and Golec felt encouraged despite himself. But when Aiden saw him standing there the sleepiness was instantly replaced with a wide-awake wariness, a shifting to something he’d seen too often in the kids he dealt with.
    “What’s up?” Aiden asked.
    “I need to talk to you about Cort Lehane,” Golec said. “He’s your friend, right?”
    “Yeah. We know each other.”
    “Aiden, he’s your best friend,” Claire said.
    Aiden gave her a hard look that Claire didn’t recognize and it worried her. “Well, we hang out but I wouldn’t exactly call him that,” he said.
    “Nonetheless, he claims you and he are tight, best buds, partners even,” Golec said and watched him closely.
    “Partners?” he asked.