“Hello, Lieutenant.”

“Hi, Sarge. What do we have?”

“A particularly nasty one, Lieutenant. The victim is a young lady in her upper 20s. She was one of the biggest music writers in the country.”

Have you determined what happened?”

“We think so. She was on the phone, talking to Slobberbone about their upcoming tour.”

“Go on.”

“While she was talking to them, she received a call from The Zawinul Syndicate.”

“I thought she was already on the phone.”

“She was on her cell phone. The second call was on her land line.”

“I see.”

“So she’s got bands on both phones. That’s when her beeper went off, telling her about a message from Elvin Bishop.”

“Sounds like she had her hands full.”

“That ain’t the half of it.” While juggling the two phones and the beeper, she’s trying to email her column, a piece about upcoming shows for Billy Cobham, to her boss from her Palm Pilot.”

“Is that when it happened?”

“Not quite. She was holding conversations on two phones, plus she had a beeper message to deal with as well as the outgoing email. And if that wasn’t enough, she was also useing her feet to punch out the number so she could fax the liner notes to the record label for the next A.J. Croce CD.”

“That’s when it happened, right?”

“Almost. The final straw was when the drummer from Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band called to tell her about their Madison Square Garden shows. A witness said he saw a bright flash of light, then a sharp, crackling sound followed by the smell of ozone filling the room. Needless to say, she was gone. Zapped into oblivion. That last call did her in. Another victim of information overload.”

“You don’t mean…”

“That’s right. With that final call she was suddenly wired to the Max.”