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With that taken care of, I brewed a pot of coffee and went on to less important tasks, like paying bills online. I took my time, letting my thoughts wander as I poked along. It felt great playing a little hooky for a change. Maybe I should have felt guilty about all those DD5 incident reports I needed to file, but they could write themselves as far as I was concerned. I was home with my own crew, feeling the love, and especially ecstatic to be taking care of people who weren’t trying to kill me for it.

For about the billionth time, I found myself thinking about how I’d been burning myself at both ends lately—burning myself out, really. That, in turn, led me to contemplate some of the job offers I’d gotten in the past few months, since a major hostage incident at St. Patrick’s Cathedral had made me into a sort of celebrity cop.

The best prospect was a corporate security management position at ABC. The job consisted of coordinating security at the local news studios they had over on Columbus Avenue in the Sixties. The commute was easy, the hours were human, and it paid about twice my current salary.

But I still had five years to go until my twenty-year pension, and frankly I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to hand in my shield just yet. The main problem was that I loved being a cop, especially a homicide detective. It was who I was.

Then again, I also loved my family, who needed me more now than ever. A job where I could count on being home every evening and weekend would be a godsend, and so would the extra money. What to do?

As usual, no clear, easy decision came to me. When I finished with the bills and some other busywork, I rounded up my sick kids and sat everybody down in front of the TV for a game of Harry Potter: Scene It?

Then my cell phone rang. I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be good news. Still, I couldn’t ignore it.

“Mike Bennett,” I said.

“Hi, Mike. This is Marissa Wyatt. Would you hold for Commissioner Daly?”

I sat up, blinking. I knew that calling in for a personal, after the chaos of last night, might cause a few grumbles. But a call from the commissioner’s office? What did he want with me? Had the Harlem fiasco turned that bad that fast?

“Mike?” Daly said.

I’d met Daly at a couple of upper-level meetings I’d been invited to. He seemed like a straight shooter, at least as straight a shooter as could be found in the puzzle palace that was One Police Plaza. I decided I might as well make my case right away.

“Hi, Commissioner,” I said. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about the way things went last night?—”

He cut me off brusquely. “We’ll talk about that later. I need you on the bricks, right now. Strange things going down this fair morning. A couple of psycho assaults, including somebody pushing a young woman in front of a subway. Then an ugly shooting at the Polo store on Madison about fifteen minutes ago. Since today looks like a catastrophe in the making, and you happen to be the department’s only former CRU section chief, I’m handpicking you to coordinate our team.”

Damn, I thought. Not fair. The commissioner must have been looking through my personnel file. In another life, back when I was single, I’d spent some time working for the CRU, or Catastrophic Response Unit, a federal forward-response team that helped out and investigated disasters, especially ones that seemed to have a criminal element.

But to call me a section chief was ridiculous. Because of my Irish gift o’ gab, they just put me out in front to distract everyone while the real heroes—my team of forensic anthropologists, environmental engineers, and clinical psychologists—made me look good.

“C’mon, Commissioner. That was a long time ago. I’ll admit it. I lost my head and worked for the Feds for a few years. You can’t use that against me,” I said. Besides, doesn’t the Nineteenth Precinct have detectives anymore?

“Oh, yes, I can. You’re my star, Mike, like it or not. And this one’s a big red ball. Make me look good,