"Regional leadership," Marcus said. "The role associated with Douglas Crane's office. We still need to establish who acted and whether the authority was delegated."
Nathan knew Douglas well enough to picture him before the name was spoken. The regional executive was fifty-eight, impeccably dressed, and famous for turning poor-performing branches into top earners. He spoke about discipline, accountability, and the importance of not letting difficult customers distract the staff from growth. He had never told Nathan outright that complaints should be ignored, but Nathan could remember more than one meeting in which Douglas had dismissed consumer concerns as noise beside the real business of banking.
The possibility that Nathan had heard such remarks and failed to challenge them made the room feel smaller. He had been proud of a bank where working people could start with a simple account and eventually buy a house or launch a company. If the same bank had quietly trained its employees to extract money from people who could least afford it, the institution had betrayed more than its advertising. It had betrayed the reason Samuel Reed opened the first door.
Just before dawn, Miriam advised him to go home for a few hours. Nathan wanted to stay, but she reminded him that a chief executive pacing behind auditors could turn questions into instructions and pressure employees to deliver the result he expected. He accepted the rebuke. As he walked toward the elevator, he looked down at his scraped thumb and wondered whether Grace had managed to sleep.
At home, he did not turn on the television. He took the old photograph of his father standing in front of the first bank branch from its place on the bookshelf and carried it to the kitchen. Samuel stood beside a hand-painted sign that read REED NATIONAL, YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD BANK, wearing a jacket that looked as worn as Nathan's. The photograph had always made him proud, but that morning it made him feel responsible in a way that pride never had.
He thought of Doris counting grocery money, Tyrone holding a complaint receipt, and Grace placing her badge on Bradley's desk. Every person in the bank's advertisements had a face now, a history, a cost that could not be translated into a growth percentage without losing something important. Nathan set the photograph upright against the coffee tin and began drafting the questions he would ask Douglas Crane.
At eight thirty, Douglas entered Nathan's office with a leather portfolio and the confident ease of a man accustomed to hearing that his region had outperformed expectations. He glanced toward the unfinished breakfast on the desk, then at the audit folder Nathan had deliberately left closed. "You wanted to see me?" he asked.
"Sit down," Nathan said. "Tell me about Branch Twelve."
Douglas smiled. "Our strongest branch. You've seen the numbers. Bradley runs a disciplined operation."
"So why does it outperform everything else?"
"Aggressive sales discipline. Clear incentives. Managers who know what they're supposed to deliver."
Nathan opened the folder. "Forty-three complaints tied to product charges and account opening practices. Only nine remain visible in the active service system. How do you explain that?"
Douglas's expression remained pleasant, but his hand stopped moving toward his portfolio. "High-volume branches get complaints, Nathan. Complaints are part of the business. They get resolved."
"Resolved complaints leave records," Nathan said. "These left gaps. Some were closed without notes and without contact with the customer."