THE TASK FORCE meeting was at a brand-new section of One Police Plaza ’s tenth floor. They must have pulled out all the stops with Homeland Security money, because it looked like a war room out of Hollywood.

There were brand-new flat-panel monitors everywhere, state-of-the-art telephone and radio com hookups, and huge PowerPoint screens covering one of the large space’s long walls. You could still smell the chemicals in the new carpet. Or maybe that was just the shoe polish that glossed the expensive wingtips of all the high-powered attendants.

The mayor was back early, I noticed, with our old pal Georgina Hottinger hovering around him like a scavenger fish around a shark. They were busy conferring with police commissioner Daly and his contingent of white-uniform-shirted chiefs. There was even a group of healthy-looking guys with executive hair whom I could only assume were colleagues of Emily’s.

Emily went over to powwow with the other Fibbies a moment after we entered. I made myself busy by taking out my cell phone and checking for any updates.

Right before the festivities were about to begin, Emily returned to where I was sitting double-fisted with coffees.

“I put a rush on the lab down in Washington for the ashes on Jacob’s forehead. The eggheads are waiting with bated breath,” she said.

“Good,” I said. “I heard back about the phone numbers. It looks like our guy hired illegals to buy the phones in cash from the three different stores. Also, Verizon Wireless pinpointed where his calls were made from. The first came back on the West Side Highway and the second one from the FDR Drive. Apparently, he was on the move the whole time he was talking to us.”

Ten minutes later, Emily and I went to the front of the room and briefed everyone about Jacob Dunning.

“Sometime in the early-morning hours of Saturday the twenty-first of February, Jacob Dunning was abducted outdoors by an unknown subject. The subject contacted the family on Sunday. A second call was made a few hours later, during which the abductor requested to speak to us.

“Proceeding by the abductor’s instruction to two-five-oh Briggs Avenue, a high-crime area of the Bronx, we found Jacob in the basement, shot once in the head with a three-eighty-caliber bullet. The body was found in a child’s school desk in front of a blackboard, indicating a high level of scene staging. There was what appeared to be a cross or an X made probably of ashes on the victim’s forehead. No foreign DNA, latent prints, or ballistic casings were found.”

I nodded to Emily.

“In terms of motive, there’s no clear indication as of yet,” she said. “No monetary demands were made. We’re not sure if the kidnapper was about to ask for money but then didn’t because of police interference. A question-and-answer sequence between the abductor and the victim does seem to suggest some vague political motives.

“Preliminary voice analysis seems to indicate that the subject is male, over the age of thirty-five, and highly educated. The subject also seems to have known many intimate details about the victim and his family, so some connection to the Dunnings by the suspect remains a distinct possibility. That’s all we have.”

Chief Fleming stood.

“For those of you who don’t already know, early this morning, a seventeen-year-old Riverdale resident by the name of Chelsea Skinner was reported missing. Her father, Harold Skinner, is the president of the New York Stock Exchange. Though there’s been no contact from anyone yet, we’re treating this as an abduction by the same person until further notice.”

There was a lot of shocked head shaking as we returned to our seats. And even more grumbling. Right now, we had no good leads, just about the worst-case scenario for the department in a high-profile media case.

I wasn’t surprised at all when Georgina Hottinger sat herself next to us a few minutes later. Giving her useless two cents seemed to be her favorite hobby.

“There are to be no information leaks from this task force, and I mean none. Anyone who is thinking of calling their hook at whatever media outlet better think again if they value their jobs. The last thing we need is some media circus.”

She turned and stared directly at Emily.

“Am I coming in loud and clear?” she said.

“Not that clear,” Emily said with her charming southern smile. “But definitely loud.”

OVER THE NEXT hour, a Major Case management setup was hashed out. A command group of all the chiefs would be situated at One PP along with the intelligence coordinators who would be in charge of collecting, processing, analyzing, and disseminating all the different leads and breaks in the case. A rapid-start operations group along with a separate investigative group was put on call to be sent to pertinent crime scenes and victim residences.

Emily and I, as the lead investigative coordinators, headed directly out to the Skinners’ residence in the River-dale section of the Bronx. We didn’t have to be told twice to get away from all that brass.

My phone rang as we got on the West Side Highway.

“Bennett here.”

“Bennett here, too, Detective,” Seamus said. “I wanted to go over the plans for you-know-who’s you-know-what.”

He was talking about Mary Catherine. Her birthday was coming up on Wednesday, and we were planning a big surprise bash. I shook my head. I’d better come up with something good. With the funny way she was acting lately, this was pretty much going to have to be the social event of the year or I was doomed.

“I’m busy right this second,” I said. “I’ll have to call you back.”

“Oh, I get it. You’re with her right now, are ya?” Seamus said in a conspiratorial tone. “Oh, she’s a cute one, all right. I’d have a crush on her, too, if I was your age. Give me a note, and I’ll pass it to her. You know you want to.”

I hung up on him.

“Who was that?” Emily said.

“Wrong number,” I mumbled.

Emily shook her head at me with a smile.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you. How do you do it?” she said. “Great cop. Great dad. Head screwed on straight. How does that happen with ten kids? Oh, and a cat. Now that’s just showing off, don’t you think?”

I laughed as I gunned it north toward the Bronx.

“You see right through me,” I said. “I rent the cat for atmosphere.”

THE SKINNERS’ HOUSE was on Independence Avenue about a half mile west of the Henry Hudson Parkway near Wave Hill. A stunning view of the Hudson River rolled silently behind the ivy-draped rambling Tudor.

There was a genteel country air about the landscaped neighborhood. Getting out of the car, I thought about how nice it would be to have a backyard. I imagined the peace and quiet as I sat on warm grass with a cold drink. More like fantasized. Within the confines of New York City, genteel country airs with river views usually go for about eight figures.

We met Schultz and Ramirez in the horseshoe-shaped gravel drive.

“Last night around ten, Chelsea snuck out of her house to party downtown with a couple of girlfriends,” Ramirez said, reading his notes. “They said they let her out of a cab here on the corner of West Two Hundred and Fifty-fourth at around two-thirty. They didn’t want to drop her right in front of the house because they didn’t want to wake up her parents. Her mom found Chelsea ’s bag with her cell phone in it on the driveway just before six. He must have been waiting for her. Nobody saw any cars or people. Neighbors didn’t hear a thing.”

“Already checked out the Skinners,” Schultz said. “Parents are clean, but Chelsea got a desk-appearance ticket for drinking on the subway about a year ago. Chelsea, apparently, is a bit of a handful.”