Read How the Light Gets In: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel for Free Online Page A

green were the same, and Gamache knew each and every one of them. Inside and out. From interrogations and from parties.
    “I had a friend visit last week,” Myrna explained. “She was supposed to come back yesterday and stay through Christmas. She called the night before to say she’d be here in time for lunch, but she never showed.”
    Myrna’s voice was calm. Precise. A perfect witness, as Gamache had come to realize. Nothing superfluous. No interpretation. Just what had happened.
    But her hand holding the spoon shook slightly, so that borscht splashed tiny red beads onto the wood table. And her eyes held a plea. Not for help. They were begging him for reassurance. To tell her she was overreacting, worrying for nothing.
    “About twenty-four hours then,” said Isabelle Lacoste. She’d put down her sandwich and was paying complete attention.
    “That’s not much, right?” said Myrna.
    “With adults we don’t generally start to worry for two days,” said Gamache. “In fact, an official dossier isn’t opened until someone’s been missing for forty-eight hours.” His tone held a “but,” and Myrna waited. “But if someone I cared about had disappeared, I wouldn’t wait forty-eight hours before going looking. You did the right thing.”
    “It might be nothing.”
    “Yes,” said the Chief. And while he didn’t say the words she longed to hear, his very presence was reassuring. “You called her, of course.”
    “I waited until about four yesterday afternoon, then called her home. She doesn’t have a cell phone. I just got the answering machine. I called”—Myrna paused—“a lot. Probably once an hour.”
    “Until?”
    Myrna looked at the clock. “The last time was eleven thirty this morning.”
    “She lives alone?” Gamache asked. His voice had shifted, from serious conversation into inquiry. This was now work.
    Myrna nodded.
    “How old is she?”
    “Seventy-seven.”
    There was a longer pause as the Chief Inspector and Lacoste took that in. The implication was obvious.
    “I called the hospitals, both French and English, last night,” said Myrna, rightly interpreting their train of thought. “And again this morning. Nothing.”
    “She was driving out here?” Gamache confirmed. “Not taking the bus, and not being driven by someone else?”
    Myrna nodded. “She has her own car.”
    She was watching him closely now, trying to interpret the look in his deep brown eyes.
    “She’d have been alone?”
    She nodded again. “What’re you thinking?”
    But he didn’t answer. Instead he reached in his breast pocket for a small notebook and pen. “What’s the make and model of your friend’s car?”
    Lacoste also brought out a pad and pen.
    “I don’t know. It’s a small car. Orangy color.” Seeing that neither wrote that down, Myrna asked, “Does that help?”
    “I don’t suppose you know the license plate number?” asked Lacoste, without much hope. Still, it needed to be asked.
    Myrna shook her head.
    Lacoste brought out her cell phone.
    “They don’t work here, you know,” said Myrna. “The mountains.”
    Lacoste did know that, but had forgotten that there remained pockets of Québec where phones were still attached to the walls. She got up.
    “May I use your phone?”
    “Of course.” Myrna indicated the desk, and when Lacoste moved away, she looked at Gamache.
    “Inspector Lacoste is calling our traffic patrol, to see if there were any accidents on the autoroute or the roads around here.”
    “But I called the hospitals.”
    When Gamache didn’t respond Myrna understood. Not every accident victim needed a hospital. They both watched Lacoste, who was listening on the phone, but not taking notes.
    Gamache wondered if Myrna knew that was a good sign.
    “We need more information, of course,” he said. “What’s your friend’s name?”
    He picked up his pen and pulled his notebook closer. But when there was just silence he looked up.
    Myrna was looking away from him, into