He had the particular quality of someone who has been watching the structure they depended on reveal itself, piece by piece, as something different from what they believed it to be. The confidence was still there, because it was habitual enough to not fully switch off. But beneath it, something had shifted.
The man in the suit was no longer leaning forward. He was sitting back. That was a visible change.
"Mr. Stole," Dr. Voss said, "the committee has several questions."
The questions took 20 minutes. They were precise questions about specific dates and specific interactions and specific conversations. They were the questions you ask when you already have a significant number of the answers, and you are establishing what someone is willing to acknowledge and what they will choose to deny on the record.
Derek answered some of them. He declined to answer others on the advice of the man in the suit, which was his right. Each declined answer was noted.
Dr. Voss finally set down her pen.
She looked at Derek with the expression of someone who has been doing this work for a long time and has learned to say difficult things without either softening or hardening them beyond what the truth requires.
"Mr. Stole," she said, "I want to ask you one direct question, and I want to ask it for the record. Did you strike the complainant in the university dining hall on Tuesday?"
The room was completely still.
The man in the suit leaned close to Derek. Derek looked at the table for a moment.
Then he looked up. "It was not intended the way it's being characterized," he said.
Dr. Voss made a note. "That is not a denial," she said.
Another note.
She looked at the committee members. Something passed along the table between them. Not words. The particular kind of communication that happens between people who have been working together long enough to not need words for certain things.
"The committee will recess to deliberate," Dr. Voss said. "We will reconvene in 45 minutes."
The room began to move.
Derek and the man in the suit left quickly into a side corridor. Ren watched them go. She noted the posture of the man in the suit, which had changed significantly from when he had arrived. She noted that Derek did not look back.
Ren stood up slowly. Deanna was standing beside her.
"You did that very well," Ren said.
Deanna looked at her for a moment. Something in her face was different than it had been this morning on the bench outside the campus entrance. Not lighter, exactly. More settled. The quality of someone who has put something down after carrying it for a long time, and is noticing, with some surprise, that their hands are free.
"I should have done it two years ago," Deanna said.