Walter's Testimony
Chapter 14 - Walter's Testimony
Walter's formal deposition, taken two weeks before the guardianship hearing, provided Renee's legal team with detailed, firsthand testimony regarding both Ethan's genuine physical recovery and the specific timeline of Damon and Vanessa's guardianship planning, testimony that considerably strengthened an already substantial defense.
"I've worked for the Whitmore family for over twenty years," Walter said, under careful, methodical questioning. "I drove Ethan's father before I drove Ethan himself. I know this family, and I know what genuine incapacity looks like, having watched Ethan's own father decline in his final years. What I've witnessed over the past two months is not decline. It's recovery, carefully documented and entirely genuine."
The deposition also covered the brake tampering evidence, Walter's decision to preserve the wrecked vehicle's components, and the forensic findings that had subsequently confirmed deliberate sabotage rather than mechanical failure.
"I want to be clear about my own reasoning," Walter said, addressing a question about why he'd preserved the components without immediately reporting his suspicions to law enforcement. "I didn't have concrete evidence at the time, only instinct, built over twenty years of watching this family's business relationships closely enough to notice when something felt wrong. I preserved the evidence because instinct told me to, long before I had proof to justify that instinct formally."
Damon's own legal team, upon reviewing Walter's deposition alongside the medical evaluations Renee had already filed, requested an emergency meeting with Vanessa, the specific tone of that meeting, according to a source within the firm that Renee had quietly cultivated over the preceding weeks, considerably more alarmed than anything either Damon or Vanessa had anticipated needing to discuss before the scheduled hearing.
"They know something's changed," Clara reported, having overheard fragments of a tense phone call between Vanessa and her own attorney the following day. "Vanessa sounded frightened. I heard her ask, quote, how bad is this, actually."
"That's precisely the reaction I expected," Renee said, when Ethan relayed Clara's report. "They filed a petition believing the medical facts were entirely in their favor. Discovering, this close to the hearing, that those facts have shifted considerably against them, without any clear understanding of exactly how much we actually know, is going to produce exactly the kind of panic that tends to make people make mistakes."
"What kind of mistakes," Ethan asked.
"People under that specific kind of pressure often try to accelerate whatever plan they still believe might work," Renee said. "I want everyone in this household exercising particular caution over the next two weeks. Panicked people are considerably less predictable, and considerably more dangerous, than calculating ones."
May you like
Ethan thought of Clara immediately, the specific danger of a household staff member who had, however carefully, been reporting on Vanessa and Damon's private conversations for the better part of two months.
"I want Clara's safety prioritized above everything else," he told Renee and Walter that same evening. "If either of them suspects her involvement before this hearing concludes, I want her somewhere protected, immediately, regardless of what it costs our case to lose her ongoing observation."
