Cal spent the rest of the morning silently staring at me while I spent the rest of it silently shooting daggers at Barbie’s back. I tried to concentrate on proofing the column I’d written last night, but for some reason, my heart just wasn’t in it. I guess death threats did that to me.

Since the PW thing wasn’t leading anywhere, I found myself instead replaying the message again, listening for any background noise that might give me a clue as to where this mystery-caller slash threat-maker slash ruining-my-life-guy was calling from. Nada. It was like he’d called from a padded cell.

Well, if I couldn’t hear anything in the background, I’d start with what I could hear—his voice.

I played it a third time, the mechanical cadence crawling up my spine. Something about its cold, inhuman tone gave me the creeps far worse than the menacing words. The caller had gone through a lot of trouble to disguise his voice. Why? Because I’d recognize it? If so, that left two options—either someone I knew was playing a prank or it was someone famous, someone whose voice had boomed at me from the big screen countless times.

Which didn’t narrow things down a whole lot.

Time to try another tactic.

I pulled up a search engine and typed in “voice disguise.” I followed the top link to a site with a list of different voice-altering programs. I hit the first one, which took me to a page called AlterAudio. For a small fee, the website promised you could change your voice from male to female, high pitched to low pitched, robotic, echo, and any other number of effects. “Create your online persona!” it touted.

I could only imagine the practical applications. How many losers were sitting at home in their underwear, chatting in Cary Grant’s voice to some unsuspecting woman?

Then again, she probably didn’t sound like Marilyn Monroe either. How did anyone ever hook up before the age of cyber lies?

I hit the “buy it now” button, cringing just a little as I charged it to the Informer’s expense account. I waited while my computer recognized their software and began loading the application on to my hard drive. Five minutes later I was hooking my pocket recorder to my computer and speaking into the end.

“Tina’s gonna catch a creep,” I said. I turned on my speakers and pressed the button to play it back.

“Tina’s gonna catch a creep,” my own voice told me.

Cal shot me an odd look.

I just waved back.

I adjusted the buttons to up the bass, lower the treble, and create a male voice. I hit play.

“Tina’s gonna catch a creep,” some guy said.

I blinked, the cadence and intonation exactly the same as mine, but in a completely different tone. Weird.