Outside, the courthouse square looked painfully ordinary. A woman walked a dog beside a war memorial, and two teenagers waited for a ride outside the library. Gallagher stood in the sunlight beside Megan without speaking. She took his hand, and he told her quietly, "I should have said something a year ago."
"Yes," she replied. The word was not cruel, but it was not softened. They walked to their car together, each aware that whatever happened to his employment, the difficult work of taking responsibility had only begun.
Porter's next interviews involved the drivers themselves. She had been warned that people might be reluctant to revisit the stops, especially if they believed their statements would be passed to the same department that had mistreated them. A victim advocate arranged neutral meeting spaces and offered the opportunity to speak privately before formal interviews. The investigators brought copies of seizure forms, but they also gave people time to tell the parts that never appeared on official records.
Pastor Colton learned about the inquiry from a reporter who called the church office. He immediately worried that the investigation would focus on the important federal official and overlook everyone else, so he requested a meeting with Porter. The captain agreed, and Colton arrived carrying his worn notebook, the banker box of letters, and a folder containing return-mail receipts. He placed them on the conference table with a gentleness that made the investigators stop talking.
"I've been writing these names down for three years," he said. "Some are people from my church, some are strangers who came because somebody told them I listened. I tried to get your state offices involved before, too. I don't need you to tell me you're shocked. I need you to read the names."
Porter opened the notebook. The first page was dated years earlier and contained Gloria Benton's account of losing nine hundred dollars. The handwriting became denser as she turned the pages, with careful annotations about bank receipts, employment records, appeal deadlines, and unanswered telephone calls. In the margins Colton had marked the few times he had reached an actual human being at a government office.
His records did not prove every allegation, but they identified people and documents that the official database had ignored. Some entries included photocopies of withdrawal slips; others contained photographs of receipts sent from phones long since replaced. One page held the name of a father who had died before receiving any answer from the county. Colton had placed a small cross beside it and written the date his daughter brought him the news.
"Why did you keep going?" Porter asked. Colton looked at her with tired surprise. "Because the people who came to me hadn't stopped needing their money," he said.
"A mother still had to pay rent. A student still had to buy books. The fact that somebody stamped my letter received didn't change what happened to them."