By the time they reached the first public hearing, the real problem had become clear: Walter testifies calmly while Celia calls him unreliable. Maya Brooks watched the reactions around the room before speaking. There was always a cost to asking questions in public, especially when the answers might embarrass people with influence. Yet the alternative was allowing an account that made no sense to stand unchallenged. The immediate question was not who deserved sympathy; it was what had actually happened.
Walter Price had reason to be careful. A careless accusation could frighten someone into disappearing, while a quiet conversation might preserve testimony for another day. Maya Brooks listened closely, asking for dates rather than rumors. The answer changed when they examined his original discharge and service records. It was a concrete detail, not a feeling, and that made it harder to dismiss. The people nearby stopped interrupting long enough to understand why it mattered.
Nobody offered a grand explanation at first. What mattered were ordinary details: the time on a receipt, the way someone glanced toward a door, and a pause before an answer that should have been simple.
It was tempting to make the whole problem about one unpleasant personality. The documents suggested something less comfortable: a system that had rewarded looking away for a very long time.
The conversation moved from suspicion to responsibility. Maya Brooks suggested that they record what each person remembered separately, before the accounts became tangled together. Nobody needed to pretend that a memory was a legal document. What they needed was a truthful beginning. The evidence concerning his original discharge and service records could be photographed, preserved, and compared with the other records already gathered. That practical decision made the next steps possible, even though it brought no immediate relief.
When Celia Whitcomb was mentioned, the atmosphere changed. Some people defended the name automatically; others went quiet because they had heard variations of the same story before. Maya Brooks did not demand instant agreement. The intention was to establish what could be proven and leave the remaining questions open. Whatever happened next, it would not be fair to make Walter Price carry the burden of convincing everyone alone.
One reasonable question led to another, and each answer narrowed the space in which an old lie could hide. The process was slow enough to test everyone’s patience.
By nightfall the initial excitement had faded, leaving the difficult work of checking facts and persuading frightened people that their testimony would not vanish again.
Before they left, a new lead pointed toward the courthouse steps. Then the hearing officer rejects the attempt to shame him. The discovery meant their next conversation would be harder to avoid.