Chapter 62.

I wondered if there was a way for me to meet Jared's parents or brother. I didn't even know where they were living. Bonnie certainly hadn't said. All I had were the parents' names, Dan and Lynn Philips. I went back to Jared's Facebook page and found his brother was named Zach, and had his own page. But he was savvy enough to avoid putting any personal data on it.

Then I remembered the memorial that Jared's friends put up for him. I left a message for the two girls, and asked them if they knew where I could send a sympathy card to Jared's family, then sat back, smiled, and waited. It wasn't long before one of them, Missy, posted a reply.

The Philips family hadn't moved far, but I knew just a few streets made a difference between the cookie-cutter condo they'd been living in and the one-of-a-kind mini-mansions like their new home. So they hadn't just moved to get away from the place where tragedy struck. They were moving up in the food chain.

Next I needed a way to drop in on them. But before I did, a connection to them fell into my lap. I don't believe in coincidences, or omens, but what else could this be? That afternoon, Chase had Jess send me a preliminary report on the study statistics, it listed the patients and the control group, and even the group who were due to be examined that afternoon. Among them was the name Lynn Philips. It was a common enough name, I supposed, but I was betting it was the same one.

Now all I needed was a reason to talk to the test subjects. I knew it wouldn't be in character to offer to do any of the interviews. I could picture the red flags it would set off.

Then, what Ellie said earlier gave me an opening. I could ask what any of them thought would be the outcome of the study. Maybe that wasn't something I'd ordinarily do either, but it would be very characteristic for me to challenge the motivation of those who'd volunteered. That might work.

I printed out the list, grabbed my cane and made my way to the interview room where I found that each of the four members of my team were busy talking to someone. The middle-aged Hispanic man that Thirteen was working with couldn't be Lynn, and neither could the teenage boy, frowning as Taub explained what he'd be doing. That left two women.

I approached Chase and the prettier of the two, a blonde who looked to be about the right age to be the mother of the murdered teen. "Did Dr. Chase tell you we'll need to take a ton of samples from you?" I began.

She smiled at me and replied, "I'm well-aware of what this will be like."

"Mrs. Adler volunteers for a lot of the drug trials at the hospital," Chase told me. "She says this is the first time she's been involved in something like this, though."

So she wasn't Lynn Philips, but I had to play out my ruse. "A professional test subject, huh?"

She laughed. "It beats playing boring card games with the other women in my building. When you have a husband like mine, who insists I don't have to work, you need something to occupy your time and make you feel like your doing something useful."

I found myself liking her, but she wasn't why I was there, so I moved on with my questioning to the woman that Foreman was interviewing, changing my approach slightly. "How can you put yourself through all of this testing when you don't have the disease we're studying?"

"I don't mind." The woman was slim with dark hair and eyes that accentuated her pale skin. There was a sadness in her eyes that I'd almost expected. You don't lose a child without feeling pain, I've been told.

"But what will you, personally, get out of this?" I went on.

"The more we learn about diseases and what causes them, the better we'll be at fighting them in the future."

"Very altruistic," I sneered.

"You don't agree?"

"Dr. House doesn't care about preventing disease, or even curing patients, just finding out what's wrong with them," Foreman answered for me.

Her eyebrows went up as she said, "That's a strange attitude for a doctor."

"Do you know anyone with hyperacusis?" I asked her. If someone in her family had the syndrome, I could understand her volunteering.

"Actually, I never heard of it until recently. I was here to see Dr. Daily and his nurse mentioned the study, so I signed up."

"What do you need a rheumatologist for? Dr. Foreman, did you know she was seeing one?" It was definitely the kind of factor that might affect her usefulness for the study, depending on what her problem was. It could be as simple as arthritis, or it could be more serious, like vasculitis. That could skew our stats.

"Oh, I'm not sick," she said. "He's my son's doctor. Was. I just wanted to thank him for his help in the past."

Was she saying Jared had an autoimmune disease that required the care of a rheumatologist? "You said was."

"My son...died recently."

"From whatever Daily was treating him for?" I asked.

"No, Doctor. If you must know, he was murdered." Her voice shook again. She swallowed, then stared at me as if she dared me to say something about that. I stared right back but didn't say a word.

"Oh, Mrs. Philips, that must be hard to accept," Foreman said.

"Yes, well, we're taking things one day at a time." She looked down at her clasped hands.

"By volunteering for a study you know nothing about?" I sneered.

"House, I think you've bothered Mrs. Philips enough."

But I wasn't through with her yet. She'd given me an opening and I had to take it. "Have they found the person who did it?"

"House!" Foreman warned.

"It's alright, Dr. Foreman," the woman said. "I'm getting used to everyone's curiosity. No, Dr. House, they haven't. In fact, they still don't know why anyone would kill him, or even how they got into our house."

"He was killed? At home?" Foreman blurted.

"Now look at who's being insensitive." I wagged a finger at him, then turned to Mrs. Philips and repeated, "I just wonder, with all of that happening, how you can volunteer this study."

"If you must know, I need a diversion, something to take my mind off of what's happened, since there's really nothing I can do about it. It's in the hands of the police right now."

"How can you live in the same place where your child died?" Foreman had been admonishing me, but he didn't know when to shut up either.

"We don't. We moved to a house, close enough so that our other son can continue at the same school. Sometimes I wonder if it was the right thing to do, but the police have allowed us to put the place up for sale."

Of course, none of that was news to me, but I had to pretend it was, and also that I was curious about the other subjects the team was examining. Without saying anything else, I went on to the man. Thirteen was starting to draw his blood. I went through the motions of asking him the same questions I'd asked the two women, and listened intently to his answers as if I was really interested. Then I did the same with the boy talking to Taub.

"Carry on," I finally said as I left. I'd achieved some of what I wanted to, met Lynn Philips. Now I had to look for opportunities to talk to her again.