Empty Ever After by Reed Farrel Coleman Page B

half the jobs we worked were farmed to us by lawyers or other investigative firms that shared our address.
    Devereaux Okum—Devo—was a thin black blade of grass with a shaved head, soft voice, vaguely feminine features, and a shaman’s eyes. He was in his early thirties and claimed he came from down South somewhere, but would never say exactly where. Frankly, he was more off-worldly than out-of-state. He had that’70s David Bowie mojo working. It was probably foolish, but Carmella and I never pressed him too hard on his background.
    What we knew about him was that he was a vegan with a sweet disposition and formal manners who was great at what he did and worked harder at it than anyone else in the firm. Devo did gadgets. Gadgets, that’s what modern investigations were all about. From tracking devices to cameras to computers, he had it covered. We paid him a big salary and had several times offered to get him licensed, even to give him a piece of the business. He had so far resisted our offers. He seemed content. I had known what that was like once, being content.
    “Hey, Devo.”
    He didn’t say anything, slowly letting out a deep breath, prayerfully pressing his palms together in front of him, a few inches from his chest. He turned to me, removing a sleek, white metallic box from his shirt pocket.
    “Good morning, Moe.”
    “What’s that?”
    “This,” he said, removing the earphones, “is the coming revolution.”
    “Looks like a cigarette case, not a revolution.”
    “It’s an Apple product that won’t be out for another few months yet.”
    I didn’t bother asking where or how he’d gotten hold of it. He was always getting things logic and the law dictated he shouldn’t have.
    “What does it do, tune your circadian rhythms and access the internet?”
    “It stores and plays music.”
    “It plays music, that’s it?”
    “That’s it.”
    “How much did it cost?”
    That elicited a sheepish smile.
    “Okay, I’ll bite. How much will it cost regular schmos like me?”
    “Around four hundred bucks,” he said.
    “Just to play music.”
    “Just to play music,” he repeated.
    “Some revolution. They won’t be able to give those things away.”

    “We’ll see.”
    I had called Devo before hitting the Dewar’s the night before. I wanted him to come in early specifically to discuss my dead brother-in-law’s voice mail message from the great beyond. Until I could get a copy of it—and I meant to get a copy—I wanted to have some idea of what I was dealing with. When we sat down in my office, I described as closely as I could what I had heard on Katy’s machine. I tried to mimic the intonation of the voice, the timing involved in the dialogue, etc. Devo didn’t hesitate to ask the million dollar question.
    “Was it Patrick’s voice?”
    “He’s dead.”
    “Moe, I did not ask if it was actually him calling. I asked if it was his voice. Those are two very different things.”
    “I don’t know,” I said. “We spoke only once, very briefly, but Katy seemed pretty convinced. Katy would know her brother’s voice.”
    Devo was unpersuaded. “She has not heard his voice in twenty years.”
    “Twenty-two plus, but who’s counting? I don’t think that matters. I haven’t heard my mom’s voice in longer than that and I’d recognize it.”
    “Possibly. I think it is situationally dependent, Moe, but let us come back to that in a moment. First, tell me if there was anything obviously mechanical about the voice. Was it robotic? Did it sound spliced? Were there inappropriate pauses? Was it scratchy like an old vinyl recording? Was there any background noise?”
    “No, there was nothing like that. It sounded pretty much like I did it for you before. Why? Does that mean it wasn’t doctored?”
    “No, not at all. With a reasonable laptop and software you can download from the internet, you can make sound sit up and beg or fetch the newspaper. There would be no limit to what a person or