Dwyer didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no, either. Finally, he leaned back in his chair. “So, what can I do for you?”
“Right, yeah. I actually wanted to ask you about this.” Falk took out his phone and flicked through to find the video of the accident Joel had shared with him two days earlier. He held it out, and Dwyer put on his glasses and leaned forward to see better. “Joel sent it to me—”
“Joel did?” Dwyer stared at the screen for a long moment, then frowned. He sat back in his chair. “Sorry, I assumed this was something about Kim.”
“No,” Falk said. “Dean Tozer.”
Dwyer blinked, catching up, then leaned in again. “Go on.”
“Joel said you knew he had this video?”
“Yeah. I did. I just haven’t seen it in a while.”
Falk waited while he watched in silence. Dwyer’s face was set, flickering just once as he reached the footage of himself observing Gemma, deep in grief. When the video finished, Falk rewound a little and paused on the clearest scene. Neither Gemma nor Dwyer were in shot and the ground around the smashed barrier was clear and unobstructed.
“I wanted to ask—” Falk pointed. “Here. There doesn’t look to be any broken glass from the headlights.”
Dwyer peered in for a moment longer. “No.” He frowned. “That’s right. From memory, there wasn’t much at all.”
“No? What did you make of that?”
“Same as you, I’m guessing,” Dwyer said. “Driver attempted to clean it up.”
“Is that usual? In a situation like this?”
“Well, we don’t get many like this, luckily. But attempting to conceal evidence after a traffic accident?” The officer pushed his glasses up his nose and thought for a minute. “Yeah. It happens. Certain mindset. It’s usually harder, though, because most smashes are on roads. Nothing much to be done about glass on tarmac. Here, though—” He pointed to the spot on the screen where the edge of the ground dropped away. “Got somewhere to hide it.”
“So, what? They swept it into the water?”
“Yeah, wouldn’t take much. Push it with the side of your boot or something. We recovered some fragments, but there’s all sorts in that reservoir. Broken bottles, dumped rubbish. Got a few different results in, some not definitive at all. Hard to know what was useful and what was junk.” Dwyer glanced up. “And Joel’s been worrying about this, has he? Now?”
“The accident, yes. Not the glass.” Falk took his phone back and put it in his pocket. “Sounds like he didn’t know about that.”
“Maybe not. He was only, what? Twelve, then? And Gemma was pretty torn up, as you can imagine. I can’t remember if we talked about it specifically or not. I would’ve tended to focus on any positive info. Which wasn’t much, unfortunately.” Dwyer rubbed a hand over his clean-shaven chin. “Joel all right, is he? Or struggling?”
“Bit of both, I think,” Falk said. “Depends how you catch him.”
Dwyer didn’t reply straightaway. Outside in the hall, Falk could hear the sounds of a photocopier firing up. “You ever meet Dean?” the officer said finally.
Falk shook his head.
“Good guy. Well liked around here. Just a normal bloke, accountant, worked locally, so most people knew him. It was a real shock. Walking his dog, wrong place, wrong time. And I’m well aware that boy of his thinks I haven’t done enough.” Dwyer’s eyes fell to the photo of his late daughter. He sounded suddenly deeply exhausted, for the first time since Falk had met him. “But I understand how he feels. I really do.”
Dwyer sat for a moment longer, staring at the desk, then cleared his throat and checked his watch. He fixed Falk with a steady look, back to his more familiar self.
“Tell me something about Kim. Something I don’t know.”
Falk gave a short laugh. “Pretty sure you know everything I know.”
“Bullshit.” Dwyer was good-natured but firm. “You were at that christening yesterday. Everyone relaxed, chatting. Reflecting. You can’t tell me there was nothing.”
Falk started to shake his head, then stopped. There was possibly something, he remembered now.
“Well, you might already know this, but she’d left her job about a year before she disappeared. Resigned, but hadn’t told anyone. Not here, anyway. Rohan said she was stressed about work in general, rather than anything specific.”
“Told you there was something.” Dwyer allowed himself to look smug for half a second before growing serious again. “What was Kim doing for money, in that case?”
“Maybe nothing. She would have been pregnant not long after.”
“You’d expect Rohan would be earning a decent enough wage as an engineer.” Dwyer looked at Falk. “Or are you thinking financial problems?”
“I really wouldn’t know. Not about them. I always tend to lean into the finances, though. Part of the job. Rule it in until I can rule it out. Might be worth considering.”
“Yeah. I will.” Dwyer frowned. “It’s a shame Kim gave up her work, though. For any reason. She was good. We have community fundraising days every year; I do a bit for that addiction charity I’m involved with. Kim ran her own business so she used to design the posters and banners for us at cost.” He swiveled his chair a few degrees so he could see out of the window, onto the main street. “Her office was just over there before she moved to Adelaide, so I’d see her most days, coming and going.”
Falk looked over Dwyer’s shoulder. Across the road, he could make out what looked to be a shared office space. Two businesses—31A and 31B, Falk could read if he squinted—with a shared frontage and entrance.
“That’s where she worked, is it?” Falk said. “What’s in there now?”
“Print shop.” Dwyer pointed to the left-hand office, then the right. “Lawyer.”
“Were either of those operating when Kim still worked there?”
“No.” At the question, Dwyer swung back a little in his chair to look at Falk. His expression was unreadable. “They weren’t.”
“What?” said Falk.
Dwyer paused, debating silently. “You’re going to read something into this.”
“I’ll do my best not to.”
“You will, though.” Dwyer didn’t sound judgmental, simply resigned to the inevitable. On the desk, his phone started ringing. He reached for it, but didn’t answer immediately. “You’re going to see something that’s not there. You will. But you’ll be wrong.”
“Okay.”
“One cop to another, this is a small town. It’s just one of those things.”
“Try me.”
“For a couple of years, Kim had the office on the right.” Dwyer picked up the phone. “And until he died, Dean Tozer had the place on the left.”
30
Dwyer was right, Falk hated to admit as he stood on the street in front of the office block that Kim and Dean had once shared. Falk’s immediate instinct was to read a whole book into that.
He’d left Dwyer to his phone call and walked out of the station and straight across the road. Falk looked at the businesses now—31A and 31B—and was fairly sure he could feel the officer’s eyes on him through the station window. Falk didn’t mind. If the situation were reversed, he’d be watching, too.