Pieces of Her (Andrea Oliver 1)

Andrew flipped through the folders until he found what he was looking for. “Read this one.”

Jane opened the file. She immediately recognized the name on the admitting form.

ROBERT DAVID JUNEAU.

She shrugged. They knew that Robert Juneau had been at Bayside. Everyone knew. It was the place where all of this had started.

He said, “Look at the admitting dates.”

She read aloud: “April 1–22, 1984; May 6–28, 1984; June 21–July 14, 1984.” She looked back up at Andrew, confused, because they knew all of this, too. Queller had been gaming the system. Patients who stayed at the facilities for longer than twenty-three days were considered long-term patients, which meant that the state paid a lower daily rate for their care. Martin’s way around the lowered rate was to kick out patients before they could hit the twenty-three-day mark, then re-admit them a few days later.

Jane said, “This is going to be released after Chicago and New York. Nick has the envelopes ready to go to the newspapers and the FBI field offices.”

Andrew laughed. “Can you really see Nick sitting around stuffing almost one hundred envelopes? Licking stamps and writing out addresses?” He pointed to the file in Jane’s hands. “Look at the next page.”

She was too stressed and exhausted to play these games, but she turned the form over anyway. She saw more dates and summed them up for Andrew. “Twenty-two days in August, again in September, then in... Oh.”

Jane stared at the numbers. The revulsion she had felt for her father became magnified.

Robert Juneau had murdered his children, then killed himself, on September 9, 1984. According to the information in his file, he’d continued to be admitted and re-admitted to various facilities for the next six months.

Queller facilities.

Her father had not just exploited Robert Juneau’s injuries for profit. He had kept the profit rolling in even after the man had committed mass murder and suicide.

Jane had to swallow before she could ask, “Did Laura know that Father did this? I mean, did she know before Oslo?” She looked up at Andrew. “Laura saw these?”

He nodded.

Her hands were shaking when she looked back down. “I feel like a fool,” she said. “I was guilty—feeling guilty—this morning. Yesterday. I kept remembering these stupid moments when Father wasn’t a monster, but he was—”

“He was a monster,” Andrew said. “He exploited the misery of thousands of people, and when the company went public, he would’ve exploited hundreds of thousands of more, all for his own financial gain. We had to stop him.”

Nothing that Nick had said over the last five days had made Jane feel more at peace with what they had done.

She paged to the back of Robert Juneau’s file. Queller had made hundreds of thousands of dollars off of Robert Juneau’s death. She found paid invoices and billing codes and proof that the government had continued to pay for the treatment of a patient who’d never needed a clean bed or medication or meals.

Andrew said, “Turn to—”

Jane was already looking for the Intervening Report. A senior executive had to sign off on all multiple re-admissions so that an advisory board could convene to discuss the best course of action to get the patient the help that he needed. At least, that was what was supposed to happen because Queller Healthcare was allegedly in the business of helping people.

Jane scanned down to the senior executive’s name. Her heart fell into her stomach. She knew the signature as well as she knew her own. It had appeared on school forms and blank checks that she took to the mall to buy clothes or when she got her hair cut or needed gas money.

Jasper Queller.

Her eyes filled with tears. She held up the form to the light. “It must be forged or—”

“You know it’s not. That’s his signature, Jinx. Probably signed with his special fucking Montblanc that Father got him when he left the Air Force.”

Jane felt her head start to shake. She could see where this was going. “Please, Andrew. He’s our brother.”

“You need to accept the facts. I know you think that Jasper’s your guardian angel, but he’s been part of it the whole time. Everything Father was doing, he was doing, too.”

Jane’s head kept shaking, even though she had the proof right in front of her. Jasper had known that Robert Juneau was dead. He’d talked to Jane about the newspaper stories. He’d been just as horrified as Jane that Queller had so spectacularly failed a patient.

And then he had helped the company make money off of it.

Jane grabbed the other files, checked the signatures, because she was certain this had been some kind of mistake. The more she looked, the more desperate she felt.