Ethan Brooks was silent for a moment before finally answering, “Lucas Morgan participated in some club activities, had a lot of friends, and often came back late from gatherings. He liked playing games, but I never paid attention to which ones, or even if I did, I wouldn’t know what they were. He didn’t really like going to the lab, barely scraped by in all his courses—I have no idea how he managed to pass. He was pretty close with a few girls, often video chatting in the dorm, and would stay on the phone late into the night. Other than that, I’m not really sure about much else.”

The detective immediately instructed, “Give us the names of those girls.”

“I don’t know any of them,” Ethan Brooks replied helplessly. “Do I look like someone who knows girls?”

The detective looked him up and down a few times. Even from a man’s perspective, Ethan Brooks was considered very good-looking, completely different from the stereotypical nerd with a bald head, big forehead, and glasses.

But a nerd is still a nerd—someone who thinks studying less than eight hours a day doesn’t count as studying. What can you even say to people like that?

The detective tapped the table with his pen and asked a probing question, “Does your roommate take any medication?”

Ethan Brooks said, “I don’t know. What kind of medication?”

“Vitamins, cold medicine, anything. Have you ever seen him take any?”

“No.”

Outside the interrogation room, Logan Bennett and Noah Wright kept their eyes fixed on his face, as if trying to catch any hint of abnormality in those simple words. But then Ethan Brooks repeated, even more firmly, “Absolutely not.”

Logan Bennett pressed his earpiece: “Ask him when he last saw the deceased.”

The detective asked, “When was the last time you saw Lucas Morgan?”

“The day before yesterday at noon, I went back to the dorm to get a book. Lucas Morgan asked me why I hadn’t been sleeping in the dorm the past couple of nights. I told him the experiment was at a critical stage and someone had to stay in the lab.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all. I didn’t have much of a relationship with him. Even though we both came from Beijing to Jianning, we barely talked. Whatever he did, I didn’t want to know and had no interest in getting involved.”

Ethan Brooks leaned forward, resting on the edge of the table, and asked, “If there’s nothing else, when can I leave? The sodium methoxide catalysis experiment is really important—I can’t just leave it unattended.”

“Brother Bennett!” The door was pushed open, and Mason Reed hurried in. “The Cultural Relics Protection Office called to confirm—the identities of the deceased Lucas Morgan and his roommate Ethan Brooks have both been verified!”

Logan Bennett nodded, but Mason Reed rattled on, “We contacted both of their internship managers, the department head at their school, and their academic advisors. We’ve basically confirmed most of what’s in the statement. But there’s still that bag. If these two really weren’t close, then there’s no way to explain why the deceased used cash and his roommate’s name to buy a luxury bag. So I contacted their class counselor—guess what?”

Logan Bennett raised an eyebrow. “Something came up?”

Mason Reed confidently flipped open his notepad, making it shine: “Something big.”

A minute later, the door to the interrogation room was pushed open again, and Ethan Brooks looked up.

Spending five figures in RMB wasn’t for nothing. Even though Logan Bennett’s white shirt was wrinkled from staying up all night and not changing, it still looked sharp and stylish. Just the simple act of putting one hand in his pocket and pulling out a chair with the other set him apart from the entire criminal investigation team, as if a scene from an American crime show had suddenly been inserted into a Chinese drama like “Stories from the Police Station.”

The detective quickly greeted him, “Deputy Bennett.”

Logan Bennett nodded, said nothing, took the statement and flipped through a few pages. No one knew what he was looking at. He just stroked his chin with interest, then suddenly asked without looking up, “You’re not close with your roommate.”

Ethan Brooks said, “No.”

“Keep to yourselves?”

“You could say that.”

Logan Bennett asked, “Then why did you submit several requests to change dorms between the beginning of the year and April?”

Ethan Brooks paused.

“On April 10th, you made your last request. The counselor rejected it, saying there were no available graduate dorms to switch to, and gave you an access card for the lab, telling you that if you really didn’t want to go back to the dorm, you could sleep in the lab at night. On April 12th, a few other graduate students needed to stay up all night for a hydrothermal reaction experiment. To keep sleeping in the lab, you even helped them run a reactor.”

Ethan Brooks said, “The lab has power all night and air conditioning…”

“On April 15th, you and Lucas Morgan came from Beijing to Jianning. On the afternoon of the 16th, Lucas Morgan went to the International Finance Center mall and bought an 18,000 yuan luxury backpack in your name.”

The interrogation room fell silent. Ethan Brooks didn’t say a word.

Logan Bennett rested his elbow on the table and said calmly, “If I used someone else’s name to buy something, there’s only one reason: I want to give it to them, but if they don’t like it, they can take it back to the store and exchange it themselves.”

“—But in the end, you didn’t take the bag.” Logan Bennett paused, then raised his eyebrows slightly. “I guess your conflict with Lucas Morgan was pretty serious, and you really didn’t like him.”

Ethan Brooks rubbed his brow with his knuckles, and as he raised his hand, both detectives noticed that his pinky and ring finger were wrapped in bandages.