Mark would never be called handsome. He carried a bit too much weight in his face for that. He was, however, garrulous. This part of his character endeared him to the administration that he served so well, since his long winded approach to any problem brought to him, bored most people to death before they got any answer.
This saved the administrators the problem of dealing with most complaints brought by faculty and staff. If the administrators wanted some legal answers, they contacted a real lawyer, usually Simon Murrain, from a high priced law firm in town.
Mark had never had any success as an attorney in the real world, but here in the cloistered world of academia, he flourished. In the rapidly changing meaning of words, Mark knew which side of the butter the bread was on. He could lie or tell the truth with the same absolute conviction.
And now he was giving an ample demonstration of this to the panel. He knew that he had been called in because Henry was terrified that the document examiner's evidence had been overturned by the defense testimony. He also knew that the three women on the panel were not disposed favorably to the analyst who had come to testify. Well, by golly, he thought, old Mark will put out the fire.
In answer to a simple question, Mark replied by starting from when he graduated from law school and tracing his entire career. Along the way, he revealed, he had discovered these particular document examiners.
For all his verbosity, he was convincing. Henry was pleased. After all, he was an attorney. Who would know better how courts and evidence worked than an attorney? Then too, Mark had been the one to send the 'suspect' evaluations to the analyst that he, himself, had recommended. Mark had ordered the material from Diana's personnel file, so he could attest to the legality of it.
Jane observed that the other members of the panel, immersed in his tale, seemingly failed to realize that he confirmed several interruptions in the chain of custody of the documents he was referring to. Most notable was when he was asked to identify the various packets of handwriting evidence that was marked as exhibits for this hearing. He either, "hadn't reviewed them closely enough to determine...." or claimed that he "honestly didn't recall who I received the note from (the note Lyle's friend had found 'strange')," as answers to direct questions from the panel.
Henry, hoping to create some clarity, put the finishing touches on the breaks in the chain of custody of the 'suspect' documents that were being discussed. "Oh, the problem here must be because some of the packets have been separated apart."
Jane noticed that Mark also had only vague recollections as to when all these things took place. He prefaced every phrase with, "to the best of my recollection" or "at best I can recall," in proper attorney fashion, proving that he had, after all, gotten something out of law school.
Having agreed, with Henry's prompting, that he did remember getting five radiology SmurFFs from Lyle, two nursing nutrition SmurFFs from Jimbo, he was handed a note, referred to as 'Lyle's friend's strange note' by Henry and asked, "And did you also sent the document examiners this note?"