So who had told her that? Did we have a leak in the department? Was there somebody out there who could read minds?

The elevator arrived and I stepped in, waving the newspaper to waft away the lingering cloud of my neighbor’s Chanel No. 5. How do you like that? I thought. Completely hamstrung before I was even out the door.

Wednesday was looking like a real winner, too.

The rattling elevated number 1 train woke me up more than my second cup of coffee did as I retrieved my Chevy out in front of the Manhattan North Homicide office at 133rd and Broadway. The department mechanics had managed to get it running okay, but inexplicably had left the passenger headrest still torn up from a shotgun assault several months ago.

I decided to appreciate the fact that it started.

As I was pulling out, my cell phone went off. My mood lightened slightly when I saw that it was the commis-sioner’s office. They had already e-mailed a request for my presence at a nine thirty A.M. meeting at headquarters. It looked like he wanted a personal briefing on the spree killer beforehand. I started to feel useful again.

I expected a secretary asking me to hold, but it was the commissioner himself. Nice.

“Bennett, is that you?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “What can I do for you?”

“Do for me?” he yelled. “For starters, how about you close your big mouth and keep it shut – especially around the Times. I don’t even talk to the press without permission from the mayor’s office. One more move like that and you’ll find yourself on foot patrol in the ass end of Staten Island. Do you understand me?”

Gee, Commish, don’t sugarcoat it, I thought bitterly. Tell me how you really feel.

I wanted to defend myself, but as fired up as Daly sounded, it probably just would have made things worse.

“Won’t happen again, sir,” I muttered.

I maneuvered the Chevy down to the street and started crawling through the morning traffic toward downtown.

Ten minutes later, as I was passing 82nd and Fifth, the phone rang again.

“Mr. Bennett?” This time it was a woman’s voice I didn’t recognize. Probably more press trying to get the latest on the case. Well, who could blame them? With the way Cathy Calvin had portrayed me on this morning’s front page, I looked like the media’s new best friend and law enforcement consultant.

“What do you want?” I barked.

There was a brief, icy silence before she said, “This is Sister Sheilah, the principal of Holy Name School.”

Oh, boy.

“Sister, I’m really sorry about that,” I said. “I thought you were? -”

“Never mind, Mr. Bennett.” Her quiet voice somehow conveyed even more distaste for me than the commissioner had.

“Yesterday, you sent in two children who turned out to be ill,” she went on. “Might I refresh your memory that on page eleven of the ‘Parent/Student Handbook,’ it states, and I quote, ‘Children who are ill should be kept home,’ unquote. We here at Holy Name are doing our best to stem the effects of the citywide flu epidemic, and the flouting of our preventative measures cannot and will not be tolerated.”

Again, I reached for my excuse bag. I had a good one. My kids had looked fine when we sent them in. But the negative mojo coming from the Mother Superior stopped my words like a cinder-block wall. I felt like I was back in fifth grade myself.

“Yes, Sister. It won’t happen again,” I mumbled.

I hadn’t made it three blocks farther south in the gridlock when my cell phone rang yet again. This time, it was Chief of Detectives McGinnis.

Why do I even have one of these things? I thought, putting the phone to my ear and bracing myself for a tirade. I wasn’t disappointed.

“Listen, Bennett. I just heard from Daly,” McGinnis roared. “Are you trying to get me fired? How about instead of canoodling with Times reporters, you do us both a favor and do what you’re getting paid for? Namely, figuring out where this serial shooter is! Your la-di-da attitude toward this case is pissing me off big-time. As is the way you’re handling this catastrophe, Mr. Expert. Now I’m starting to understand why people got so upset about Hurricane Katrina.”

That was it – I’d had enough. Two capitulations was my morning’s limit. I was also fed up with having the truly self-sacrificing professionals I used to work with at the CRU be insulted. Had McGinnis ever been a first responder at a plane crash? Had he ever had to work in a portable morgue and deal with human misery on a mass scale day in and day out? I cut sharply in front of a Liberty Lines bus and shrieked to a stop in the middle of Fifth Avenue. The rush-hour traffic behind me must have snarled clear back into Harlem, but I didn’t care.

“Hey, that gives me an idea, boss,” I yelled. “From here on out, I’m legally changing my name to Mike ‘-La-di-da’ Bennett. If you don’t like that and you want my resignation, you’re welcome to it. Or maybe you should just go ahead and bring me up on departmental charges. Canoodling in the first degree.”

I endured another icy pause before McGinnis said, “Don’t tempt me, Bennett,” and hung up.

I sat there for a second, my face red, my head pounding. His giving me an earful was one thing, but to imply that I’d jeopardize a case over a reporter was a really low blow. They asked me to come in on this, right? What an idiot I’d been – so proud to be handpicked, and worried sick about letting down the team. Now my team was kicking me in the teeth.

I guess William Tell’s son had been handpicked, too. Right before they’d put an apple on his head.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I yelled to the wailing horns all around me. No wonder people in this town went nuts. I added my own horn to the chorus as I peeled out.

In a conference room on the twelfth floor of One Police Plaza, I met Detective Beth Peters face-to-face for the first time, by the coffee cups. Fortyish, petite, and fine-boned, she looked more like a news anchor than a cop. She was pleasant but sharp, with a quick smile. Again, I got the sense that we were going to get along.

But there was no time for small talk. This was an emergency task force on the shootings, put together by Chief of Detectives McGinnis. After my morning’s conversation with him, I was almost surprised that I was actually allowed to take part.

There were about twenty of us crammed into the room, mostly NYPD, but I spotted a few FBI agents and civilians. Beth and I found seats at the back end of the conference table as Paul Hanbury, a young black forensic psychologist and Columbia professor, spoke first.

“I think from this person’s attention to detail, we can rule out the possibility that he’s a paranoid schizophrenic. If he were hearing voices, he probably would have been caught by now. However, he does seem to be somewhat delusional. And with his changing clothes and using two different weapons, I don’t think I’d completely rule out that a multiple personality is involved. At this point, I can only guess at a motive, but he fits the model of a reclusive type who doesn’t get along with others – maybe someone who suffered an early childhood trauma and is seeking revenge through a homicidal fantasy.”

Next to give us his take was Tom Lamb, a thin, harried-looking FBI profiler from 26 Federal Plaza.

“Our shooter is almost definitely a male, probably in his thirties. I don’t know if I go along with the fact that he’s reclusive. He certainly has no qualms about getting up close and personal with his victims. The fact that he’s using two different caliber weapons leads me to believe he’s either ex-military or a gun nut. I’d lean toward the latter, so maybe we should take a look at the usual Guns and Ammo suspects.”

“Do you think there could be more than one killer?” Beth Peters asked him. “Maybe a team of shooters, like the Malvo thing down in DC?”