He talked for four hours.
Cole sat in the room with the board's representative — a woman named Hessa who had the specific professional composure of someone who had been in difficult rooms before and knew how to hold them. Cole was there not to conduct the interview but to ensure the account was complete. To ask the follow-up questions that a board representative might not know to ask.
I was not in the room.
Not because I was excluded — Darius had offered. I had said no. The interview was board procedure. The Read would have been useful but the Read's findings were not board-admissible in the formal sense, and using it risked the procedural integrity of the account.
But Cole was in there.
And Cole noticed things without the Read.
He came to the kitchen at nine when the session ended.
