I nodded, still pressing into her shoulder. Beth guided me to a chair in front of her desk, but rather than sit behind it, she pulled up another chair and sat in front of me as well, the better so she could be closer to me. She had a gentle, compassionate, maternal smile on her face.
“I know it may seem like I have pushed you away from things and that things are corrupt,” she said. “I suppose, in the strictest sense of the word, that is true. However, there are some things you need to know about the Reapers and why you should consider them friends, not enemies, of the town.”
I took a deep breath, trying my best to give Beth a fair shot at explaining everything. I wasn’t sure if I was going to change my mind, but I did know that for the first time since I started working here, I was actually going to know how things were going to work here.
“When I started in the role that you had, there was a well-known member in town here known as Roger Carter. He was a man that had a long rap sheet, not for the worst of things, but the kinds of things that a typical young male adult was bound to get into. Speeding. Public disturbances. That sort of thing. The first time I met Mr. Carter, I had an attitude similar to yours—ambitious, determined to clean up the city at all costs, a spirit of peace through aggression. And that is a wonderful thing to have, and I hope you still have in ten years, just to be clear.”
I smiled gently at that before wiping away a few tears.
“However, one thing I quickly realized about Mr. Carter was he was incredibly nice and kind, and even though he had a rebellious streak like no one else, he had a great heart. He was also oddly calculated in the laws he chose to break— for example, he could not understand the reasoning for speeding being a penalty if he could drive in control, but he never did anything that hurt anyone else. Never committed theft. Never murdered anyone. Got into a few fights, but never hit a woman or hurt a child.
“He was a man who, as time passed, I almost counseled. I told him he was a man who could make a profound difference in the town of Springsville if he just knew how to focus himself a little bit. He had so much potential for good, but he was squandering it with his petty run-ins with the law. How could he pull himself out of it? How could he find a way to help others? I kept pushing him, encouraging him to do it. Eventually, he figured it out.”
I knew what she was about to say.
“He founded a group called the Black Reapers,” Beth said. “Apparently, that was the name of a group he and his high school friends had come up with. The idea of the group was that they had two things in common—a love of motorcycles and a love of freedom. That’s what he pushed it as, officially. But one thing he always emphasized was that freedom did not mean freedom to impinge on others’ freedom. It was only for whatever you could do.”
For some reason, even though I didn’t know Lane that well, this sounded a lot like the Lane Carter I had read about in his bio. He didn’t have any severe strikes on his public record, and his aloof nature from before almost seemed like a misguided way of letting everyone have their own sense of freedom.
“At first, many of the citizens felt disturbed by this new development. They didn’t like the sound of motorcycles running through the area, audible from all the neighborhoods. But in time, they realized how much good they did for the area. They’d host charity runs. They’d appear at public events in support of the police and firemen. They could take action in ways those bound by the law could not.”
It was the first time she had hesitated when speaking.
“About ten years into his tenure as founder of the Black Reapers, Roger met a lovely lady named Kristin, whom he fell in love with almost on the spot. They got married within a year of meeting each other, and within just a couple of years after that, the man who now leads the club was born.”
“Lane Carter,” I said, the name escaping my lips with almost a breathless ease.
Beth nodded, and I swore the smile on her face suggested she knew what I had done earlier with him. That was crazy, of course—there was no way that she could have known. But sometimes, a woman just knew. And Beth seemed a lot smarter than I had ever given her credit for.
“In all my time I have known Roger, Lane, and Cole, they have never been dangerous or a menace to Springsville. Roger never lost his rebellious streak, and Lane could sometimes be a bit cocky for my own tastes, but the three of them always had Springsville’s best interests at heart. I recognize I have a bias for them, I am fully aware of that. Thankfully, such bias has not caused me any great regrets. The few times that we have a severe crime in this town, it’s readily apparent that it’s not the fault of the Reapers. I do recognize that someday it may result in that, but you know what?”
“What?”
“Life is not always black and white. The law is, but the law is not a computer that can just pick up on violations at every moment. The law is a set of rules made by men and women, and it’s up to us to enforce it and understand why such rules exist.”
She sighed and let out a short, sad laugh.
“The Reapers, I will admit, are a group I will never fully understand,” she said. “To be honest, I’m not sure any woman can fully understand a group of men that operate as they do. But I do know that if I got rid of them, the Fallen Saints would run this town over in a heartbeat, and if you want to talk about a group that you do need to go after? It’s the Saints.”
“Are they that bad?”
I had never seen Beth look so serious.
“Their leader goes by Lucius, but I knew him as just Lex,” Beth said. “If Roger was the boy whom I laughed at for the things he did, Lex was the one who sent shivers down my spine. Both Roger and Lex believed ultimate freedom was ideal, but Lex didn’t care much for the freedoms of others. If he wanted the freedom to sleep with women, he’d do it, even if the women didn’t want it. If he wanted the freedom to steal, he justified it by saying the rich didn’t need it. Roger kicked him out about five years into the founding of the Reapers, but it didn’t take long for Lex to re-appear under the name Lucius.”
Beth sighed again.
“It’s my greatest career regret that I have not been able to topple the Saints.”
“Why?” I said.
Perhaps it was too bold a question, especially given how seriously affected Beth seemed by the statement. But if we were here to discuss truths to the degree that it could change my mind about staying here, I needed all the answers.
“The Saints don’t care about authority,” she said. “If I sent a squadron of cars to the Reapers right now, my officers would get laughed at and teased while they did their duty, but the bikers would comply. They’d help us in their own, shall we say, unique way. But the Saints? They’d just shoot us. I have a thousand reasons to have Lex and everyone else in the Saints arrested, but I’m not about to put any police officers in harm’s way. I have someone else who’ll take care of them.”
“The Reapers,” I said with a gasp.
Beth nodded with a sad smile.
