Henry searched quickly through his copy of the evidence that had been sent to the document examiners as standards. Good God, he thought. What is this creature doing? Come on Lyle, don't let her get the best of you.
Ah, much better, Henry observed happily to himself as Lyle started tap dancing around her question. Instead of yes or no, he would repeat at length some of his previous testimony with added embellishments and avoid answering.
By persistent questioning, Diana established that he had stapled her brief note to one of the 'suspect' SmurFFs before it was sent out for analysis. But it was like pulling teeth. He kept reiterating that it was stapled to a 'suspect' evaluation, so it would not get lost.
Patiently, she repeated her question, finally wearing him down. "Were the document examiners given this evaluation with the note stapled on it as one of the 'fictitious' critiques?"
"Yes, they identified that critique as having been written by you."
"No distinction between the note and the critique was given them—according to their report, is that correct?"
"I guess so, yes."
Using a sketch of the NERD office, Trenchant ran Lyle back through his previous testimony of how the blank critiques, the SmurFFs, were given out, how they were collected and what happened to them afterwards.
From her intimate knowledge of the operation, she was able to reveal most of the lies he had told of this process when the committee was questioning him.
Jane was listening carefully. Slowly, there evolved the information that this whole evaluation process was sloppy and unreliable. That it had indeed, been this way for years. Given that, she thought, how could he claim that such a high reliance was put on SmurFFs when assessing faculty for reappointment?