Loretta placed a smaller stack before him. It contained letters from other people, copies they had given her because she had once helped them write complaints. One was from Ruby Thompson, who had waited weeks for her pension deposit to be released after a manager described it as unusual. Another came from Marcus Jenkins, a plumber who lost a business opportunity when loan paperwork disappeared and a lending officer insisted he had missed the application deadline. A third described a widow named Rosa Martinez, who had been charged repeated fees while trying to correct the address on her husband's estate account.
"They came to me because I used to teach their grandchildren," Loretta explained. "Or because I knew how to write a letter that made a person answer a question instead of sending another brochure. I couldn't fix everything. But I told them to save what they were given."
The doorbell rang just after midnight. Deacon Raymond Briggs stood on the porch holding a thick folder beneath his coat. He was sixty-eight, broad through the shoulders despite an old injury to his hip, and his beard had gone almost entirely gray. He had been a friend of Thomas's for nearly four decades and still addressed Loretta as Sister Johnson when he wanted to make her laugh.
"I heard about the deputy," he said when she opened the door. "I also heard there were some people from the bank finally taking questions seriously. Thought this might be useful."
He put his folder beside the shoe box and removed a folded newspaper clipping. It was from 2010, a brief report about an earlier settlement involving unfair account practices at an institution later absorbed into Harland's network. The article carried a photograph of several executives. At the edge stood a younger Pamela Ror, then serving in a regional management role. Darius recognized her immediately.
"She was involved back then?"
"She signed a letter to our church community group promising that complaints would be reviewed fairly," Briggs said. "We kept the letter. Every time another family ran into trouble, we wrote again. Sometimes we received a reply. Usually we didn't."
The deacon's folder held copies of those letters and meeting notes from church assistance sessions. He had kept lists of families who wanted help with account closures, unexplained fees, and mortgage-servicing disputes. Some allegations could have been mistakes. Some were too old to investigate effectively. Darius refused to treat every story as proof of wrongdoing, however much he believed the people telling it. The right response, he told them, was to trace records where possible and to make certain witnesses could speak without being punished.
"I want us to distinguish what we know from what we suspect," he said. "If someone had an account frozen, that fact is not automatically proof of discrimination. We need the timing, the stated reason, comparable treatment of other customers, and any records about who made the decision."
Briggs nodded. "That's fair. But it has to be the same standard for the families in this folder as it would be for a wealthy businessman who walked into that branch with his own lawyer."
"Exactly."