Torgerson shook her head impatiently. She wasn’t volunteering much information. Should he be worried or was she simply wanting to keep all the glory of solving the case for herself? He needed to get her talking.

“How could he afford this place?” Last Eban had heard—from Darby—grad students didn’t earn that much.

“He shares with another grad student, Gregory Kwan, who recently traveled north to the Arctic Circle to examine the thickness of the ice sheets. He won’t be back for several weeks.”

“When did the roommate leave?”

Torgerson eyed him. “A week ago. It wasn’t him.”

So, Martin didn’t live alone, but he’d been living alone at the time of his death. The situation reminded Eban of his own arrangements with one of his colleagues and best friends. They both traveled so much for work they rarely crossed paths. Now Max had a serious girlfriend, Eban figured he’d see even less of the guy.

He walked across the hall to another bedroom. The bed was made, room tidy. Clothes neatly hung in the closet. It didn’t look like anything had been disturbed.

“Why would the suspect,” he forced himself to use that word, “sleep on the couch when there are two spare beds?”

“She said she slept on the couch. Doesn’t mean that actually happened.”

Except Eban knew Darby. If that’s what she said, that’s what she did.

He went back into Martin Carstairs’s bedroom. “Do you have photos of the body in place?”

Torgerson reminded him of a recalcitrant teen as she impatiently flipped open the photos on her cell and handed it to him. Without asking permission, he forwarded all the relevant images to his own cell. He handed the phone back to the detective. “Thanks.”

She looked pissed though she held her silence. He scrolled through the images. Found a photograph of the victim taken from above. Naked with a large hunting knife embedded in his chest. Not a lot of blood, suggesting the guy had died instantly. He’d have to ask the ME about that.

“It takes a lot of force to inflict a wound that deep. You think Darby O’Roarke is strong enough to do that?”

Torgerson shrugged to cover her obvious uncertainty. “People are capable of incredible feats of strength under extreme circumstances.”

Eban knew Darby was capable of incredible feats, but those circumstances wouldn’t include cold-blooded murder. “Were there any defense wounds?”

“No. I don’t think Martin knew what hit him.”

Martin? “Did you know the victim?” he asked.

She gave him the side-eye. “No, I didn’t know him but from all accounts he was a nice guy.”

Was she telling the whole truth? Eban wasn’t sure, but he wasn’t about to cast aspersions.

He wandered over to the bookshelf. A few textbooks on Geophysics, Climate Change, computer programming, modeling. A lot of fantasy novels on the second row. On top was a family photo at a wedding. Martin Carstairs was wearing a morning suit, clearly related to the groom. It reminded Eban that Martin had people who loved him, the same way Darby did. He clenched his jaw.