The Adults Are Talking
Introducing Egon Selliken, true crime writer & Joan's father - Chapter 9.
Photo by Nic Adler on Flickr.
The Tenderness of Wild Beasts
Text all rights reserved © Saint-Lazare, 2025.
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Part II - The Father
[…] the trouble with trying to escape yourself is that you bring yourself along for the ride. –Salman Rushdie
Chapter 9: Feast of Carrion
I would like to be able to remember what Paul Aldon Grose looked like. It is true that I have only met him once, contrary to you, Joan. But I wish I had taken a second look at him, now that I realize the crucial role he has played in your life. I guess I just have to take a look at some pictures on the internet, but I will not do that. So, all I remember from my encounter with him is his pool boy.
You know, the perk of our conversation is that we are not forced to apologize for the half-truths we are telling while comparing the two sides of the story. Our relationship induces those half-truths. Reality does too. Just like when you said you were certain that I never fully noticed Lucero, which is obviously inaccurate considering my investigation. But I know, and you know, that in a way it is true. I have been to a place called Lucero, looking for a girl named Mary Jane McCord. Yet, I have never been to that Lucero. I have never found that Mary Jane McCord. Because we can agree that none of them exist, right? At least under this form. They are just a certain angle of perception. Just like Grose’s pool boy.
“So, you are the guy from the San Francisco Chronicles,” said Paul Aldon Grose when he invited me into his home, ten years ago.
I did not confirm or deny this information, simply shrugging.
“My name is Egon Selliken. I’m writing a book on the Phantom of the Salinas River.”
Technically, Grose was supposed to know that. It had been hard to convince him to talk, and it only happened because we shared the same agent, who owed me a big favor. Perhaps the mansion paid with foreign royalties and scenarii sold to prominent studios had touched a nerve, but honestly, I cannot remember a single detail of his house. Grose did not want the interview to be lazily conducted in a living room. We were supposed to sweat together in his private gym, his assistant had informed mine. Why is that? I guess it was the only room with a good view on the pool boy.
I remember the sound of rain falling on the hills of Los Angeles, the gloomy reliquiae of palm trees escaping from the dirty white peacefulness of the smog. The pool boy looked oddly natural in the picture, his soaked white shorts revealing interesting glutes. The condensation on the bay window prevented a better look.
I was mildly convinced by the cardio requirement of this interview, but the super writer had already jumped on one of the two elliptical cross trainers. I imitated him and put my recorder on the screen’s frame. Each time I had found myself exercising on this type of machine, I fancied selecting landscape backgrounds related to the Zodiac killer’s case. Apparently, I could not sweat properly without looking for the shallow grave of Donna Lass at Lake Tahoe. This time, I had trouble concentrating on something else than the young lad filtering the grey water outside, yet I was sweating heavily, even with the a/c on.
“You know, Egon… I can call you Egon, right? You can call me Paul… I’m not sure I can be helpful,” stated Grose.
Indeed, until then, he had not been; none of his novels or scenarii seemed to bear some information on the attack he had been a victim of. He was not widely known for it either, as if he had something to hide. But in that gym, I could witness the marks of the trauma, especially as his speed was insanely high, and a glimpse at his screen revealed that his heart was beating way too fast.
“The attack seemed to last an hour, but it was barely three minutes,” recalled Paul. “Three minutes of total darkness and confusion. And with years, I have made a duty out of forgetting things.”
In spite of his heavy breathing, I could not help but admire his sense of storytelling. He was a writer for sure and, according to this house, a clever one. He had remained silent about that past event until now; why the sudden change of mind? I realized that actually, the heavy breathing was coming from me. He did not seem to notice, absorbed as he was by the view, with “Soul Auctioneer” by Death in Vegas playing in the background. I tried to synchronize to the thumping rhythm of the song.
“There are hands in my pockets
Pulling up my spine
Eggs bearing insects
Hatching on my mind”
The more I stared at the foggy garden, the more I thought that the pool boy reminded me of this eerily hot vaping guy from YouTube who was my main fapping material lately. Those limbs of neon-colored smoke coming from his mouth before re-entering it… I had to concentrate. Paul was trying to remember some details of the case; unfortunately, I already knew them. The brand of his car, the moon in the sky, the book on the backseat.
“A poisoned mind will make you blind”
“I perfectly remember her,” continued Paul. “I was calling her Joan instead of Mary Jane. It was a joke between us. She had dark brown hair and this serious look on her face. The smallest mouth I’ve seen. Pouty. And those dark inquisitive eyes…”
Suddenly, he extended his hand to clear the window and I had a better look at the pool boy. He had a crew cut and I noticed his pouty lips and bushy eyebrows.
“Joan had slim yet toned legs with ridiculously thin shoulders, disappearing under boyish clothes. She was a small, nervous animal.”
My heart was pounding now, and I tried to reduce the speed of the machine but it seemed to follow Paul’s.
“A dead head, a blunt needle”
I was not sure anymore of who he was describing, his date the night of the attack, or his wet employee. Some substances –and my boner– clearly did not help.
“And the attacker?” I tried to ask, drooling and asphyxiating.
The smell of testosterone was almost nauseating.
“You’ve broken your wings
You’ve lost your demon”
“I told you, I remember nothing.”
The machines brutally stopped, as well as the music. I think Paul had left to take a shower. I closed my eyes for a moment to grasp my breath and when I reopened them, the pool boy was facing me, removing his soaked clothes. I could feel fresh air and rain falling on my face. His body was hairless and before he kneeled down I had a good view of his beautiful cock. He unfastened the cord of my jogging pants and took mine out, titillating it a bit with his tongue before putting it in his warm mouth. I thought that it looked like very conventional gay porn, which was not exactly my type. I thought that vaping was a useless activity. I thought that I should exercise more.
I lost the count of time while he was sucking me. I think I ejaculated on a stack of dumbbells but I was not ashamed of it. When I came back to my car after thanking Paul for his time and cooperation, I realized that if my hair was wet, my clothes were not. According to the tape, that day I had tried every interviewer’s trick I knew to force his memories of the attack, but all I had obtained was a description of you that did not seem accurate. Maybe Paul has been too distracted by his pool boy. Maybe I was.
But the pool boy doesn’t truly exist, right?
Even if my pride makes it painful to admit it, I did not see this story coming.
See, usually, I call myself a good investigator, one with instinct. One with an unhealthy taste for the unsavory situations you can expect when nursing an obsession with murderers. For that matter, I was not shy to use social media to turn gossip mongers into informers. Milking those smartasses never bothered me, even less dealing with weirdos and creepy fangirls. True Crime is the contemporary equivalent of a Roman arena, a community devoted to the satisfaction of our vilest bloodthirsty instincts. You could be surprised to see who was hiding behind the followers of my social page; less metalhead wannabe killers than expected, but more mothers of three, and girls next door. Knowing the true nature of my public –revolting, scary– I was giving away the minimum of my personal information. I reported on local crimes like a greedy sleepwalker, picking a subject solely on the base of the pay; but this was occasional. Just enough to regularly gas up my 1968 Lincoln Continental. I was focusing almost entirely on the Zodiac Killer’s case (hence the car, which has a Zodiac symbol on it) along with gay murderers. I only had time for followers with free, useful tips on my open cases. So, I never felt truly concerned by online harassment. Yet, I have to admit that I was more and more bugged by the comments I received on social media, where bots and trolls were having a field day lately. To the point I almost missed the piece of puzzle I was waiting for, for decades.
Egon Selliken @EgonSelliken. 5h
Investigating the death of Cameron Madden near the Napa River, Vallejo CA May 22 2016. DM if you have tips.
Betty Johnson @mindhunter4eva. 5h
Replying to @EgonSelliken
Hey Egon did you hear about the missing kids in Lucero, Monterey County?
Hank Turner @riversidebiker91. 4h
Replying to @EgonSelliken
Do u have infos on missing children Fiona & Nathan Garrison? Were last seen near crime scenes of Phantom of the Salinas
Charlie Kinbot @calfire666. 3h
Replying to @EgonSelliken
There is a very loud amusement park right in front of my present lodgings.
Arthur Leigh Allen @doncheney68. 1h
Replying to @EgonSelliken
I’ve heard you have had interesting bisexual experiences back in Stanford…
KatyIsHot @dead2meetU. 1h
Replying to @EgonSelliken
Jeffrey Dahmer rocks ♥ ♥ ♥
Those comments about my Stanford years started recently. At first, I did not flinch, as my academic resume was easily found online, and nutcases hanging on true crime’s pages were noticeably needy for reactions. But soon, I realized that these messages were different. They knew something. I even suspected they were coming from genuine former classmates, or even (I am not really proud to admit that) from your mother. Obviously, they were not and I was starting to be freaked out by their scheming knowledge. Blocking them turned out to be useless; they kept coming back, always using names of Zodiac suspects.
I was texting my assistant Mallory to enquire if my special friend at San Luis Obispo’s Men’s Colony had access to the internet and social media, when I received a notification from my mailbox. It was one of my loyal followers, Hank, who was sharing a picture taken at the wedding party where the kids mentioned in my thread had vanished.
He asked, “Is this the guy you were looking for?”
I knew who Hank was referring to, even before opening the attachment.
The quality of the picture was far from optimal but still exploitable. It was a typical still from a party, with its dark, blurry background, faces captured during their least attractive expressions. Women, breasts out and throats offered in theatrical laughs; men, red-eyed, stopped in alcoholic sways of hips. No kids. A girl, in the shadow, who seemed barely there. You?
And this guy. It took me less than a second, even with years. He had his recognizable mask on, the one of indifference, of control, oozing coldness and vice out of the pixels. The skin was even more pallid with the shaved head, and I was surprised how buff he was now. I think I could not help trying to zoom on his crotch. Yeah, my informer got nose on this one.
For sure, it was the guy I had last seen in a gas station in Salinas, eleven years ago. Nahuel Summers.
The emails kept coming, the notifications were jingling, the phone was ringing.
Shannon wanted to know if her kids were safe from a child killer –and if Dahmer truly said tattooed skin tasted worse than normal skin.
Retiredteacher56 wanted to know if I thought the mother killed her children –and advised me to look in her vagina for the murder weapon.
The Mercury News wanted an article on the disappearance.
Mallory wanted me to know that my special friend was only granted access to opera videotapes.
The Modesto Bee wanted an interview of a psychic who claimed she could locate the Garrisons.
My mother wanted to know if I would attend my cousin’s birthday party –because it would do her good after her last rehab.
The San Bernardino Sun wanted coverage of the newlyweds’ state of mind.
Jewctopus9 wanted to know if I could buy something on his Amazon wish list –in exchange for one hour of cam.
The Los Angeles Time left a voicemail to ask if I wanted to interview the mother.
I called back to say yes, before turning my phone off. I threw my backpack on the passenger’s seat of the Lincoln Continental, checked the gas tank, and took the direction of Lucero.
(To be continued).