Sins of the Father

Chapter Thirty

Mercy rang in the new millennium with Happy and the Sons of Anarchy at a clubhouse in Orlando, Florida. Little did she know that this would be the last time she'd be happy or carefree for a good long while.

***

A month later, Mercy and Happy had only been settled at their new small place in Charming, California, when the contents of her father's storage unit were delivered. She'd chosen to leave his ashes at the mortuary in Texas that had been holding onto them for over a decade. She didn't want them in her home, and she didn't know what else to do with them, so Happy had helped her arrange for long-term storage while she figured it out.

"You ready for this shit, little girl?" Happy asked as they sat side by side on the couch. Four medium size cardboard boxes sat before them on the coffee table.

"I'm never going to be ready for this," Mercy replied as she opened the first box.

Inside she found a post office's worth of letters. It was all the correspondence her father had received while in prison. It had been released to his estate to be passed on to his next of kin after his execution. Most of it was from insane fangirls who, for some ungodly reason, worshipped serial killers. At the bottom of the box, Mercy found the stack of letters that would provide her with nightmares for years to come. When she saw that the return address on the envelopes was a prison in Florida and read the inmate's name, she had to do a double-take to make sure she had read it correctly. With shaking hands, she opened the first envelope.

*** Mr. Clyde,

It sounds as though we once shared a common stomping ground in the Pacific Northwest. We certainly find ourselves in similar circumstances. I thought I would reach out and extend a friendly hello.

~ Peace,

ted ***

"You've got to be fucking kidding me." Mercy handed the letter over to Happy. "My dad was pen pals with Ted fucking Bundy."

From that first letter, they descended quickly into the depths of depravity and evil. From what Bundy wrote, the two men were sharing details of their crimes through thinly veiled third-person point of views.

"I'm pretty sure that Bundy gave the locations of like six unknown victim gravesites." Mercy rand a hand through her hair. "And he's talking about murders my dad supposedly did, but none of the details match up to his confessions or suspected murders."

"Little girl," Happy was looking at her seriously. "This is the only time you'll ever hear my day this, but we need to call the fuckin' feds."