Murder at McDonald's

by Jessome, Phonse;

  Muise objected to his persistent questioning, saying it upset him. “Well, when you start drilling at me and that …” Muise’s voice trailed off as Trickett interrupted. He wasn’t ready to hear about this kid’s problems; he had a multiple murder to solve. “I’m not drilling you,” the constable said. “I’m telling you straight to your face that you know something about it.”

  “I told you right back, I don’t.”

  “Now come on, Darren, be honest with me, boy.”

  “I am, I told you.”

  “You’re not. Who are you afraid of?”

  “No-one.” Muise’s tone was one of exasperation as he leaned back in the chair, throwing his arms apart in a gesture that suggested he did not understand how the misunderstanding could have arisen. But Trickett wasn’t buying the answer or the body language that accompanied it. “There’s gotta be somebody, Darren. Holy jeez, boy, there’s so many inconsistencies.”

  Then the officer decided he would change tactics. Instead of suggesting that Muise was merely hiding information to protect someone else or because he was afraid, Trickett began to treat him as though he was the one responsible. He knew that the description of the injuries to the victims had upset Muise the day before, so he headed down that road—only this time he took Muise along as he described what he believed had happened to Neil Burroughs: “He was over there working on his stuff, when he was shot in the back of the head, when his neck was cut, when he was shot there—” Trickett used his finger to point to his own head, as if his hand were a gun—“when he was shot through the ear because he wouldn’t stay down. Were you there?” Muise’s hand went over his mouth again, and once again he crossed one leg over the other, rocking back and forth in a steady rhythm that belied the anxiety he must have been feeling. “Or the poor bastard, when you were going out the door and he was coming in,” Trickett continued. “Were you there when he got drilled right there?” And he pointed to his head again.

  “I wasn’t there.” Muise lowered his head as he answered, reaching back with his hand and running it through his thick black hair.

  “Tell me. Tell me.”

  “I wasn’t there.”

  “You weren’t there,” Trickett repeated after him. Muise flung his arms apart as he looked at the angry officer and, raising his voice a little, he insisted: “I told you I had nothing to do with it. I wasn’t there.”

  “Nothing to do with it. You weren’t there. Did you have knowledge of it?”

  “No!”

  Trickett tried to change the mood again, this time attempting to appeal to Muise’s conscience. “Come on, Darren, you’ve got three people killed. Does that bother you?”

  The answer was not what Trickett expected: Muise yawned, leaned back in the chair, stretched, and ignored the remark.

  “Look! A big yawn. So what. Big deal.” Trickett looked incredulous.

  “Sorry,” Muise said. “I’m tired.”

  The conversation continued, but after twenty minutes or so, it became clear who was going to win this round. Muise began to take a firm stand. “I just want to say one thing. You told me when I came here, right?”

  “Yeah.” Trickett knew what was coming.

  “If I wanna leave I can leave, and you said you’d leave then and there.”

  “Yeah, sure …” But Muise interrupted before the officer could say more. “I asked you five times,” the young man said. “No, six times.”

  “Yeah, we can go. We can go—” and as Trickett uttered those words, Muise stood up. The officer did not like looking up at him, so he too got to his feet, but Muise had already turned towards the door. Trickett knew he was beaten, but wanted Muise to know it wasn’t over yet. “We can go, but just remember that there are three people dead. We don’t believe you, O.K.?” Muise responded with an affirmative “Mmm-hmm” and a nod, but no words. He wasn’t going to be drawn back into the debate.

  Trickett wasn’t quite finished. “We don’t believe you one little bit,” he said. “You’re not pulling the wool over our eyes. Someday, some policeman’s gonna come to your door, and I’d suggest to you that day is not too far away.”

  The two walked out of the polygraph room and to the parking lot as Trickett continued to impress upon Muise that he had not won, that he had not fooled anyone. Muise sat quietly in the car as the officer continued his lecture and they drove towards Sydney. Trickett noticed that his passenger had started to cry quietly. Muise wanted sympathy. “It’s a sad day when a machine is taken over the word of a man,” he said.

  “It’s more than just the machine, Darren, and you know it.”

  As they drove on, Muise told Trickett that the wounds on his arm had in fact been self-inflicted, and that he had also taken pills. Then he said he was afraid, not because of what he’d done but because of what he knew. What if—he asked—what if he had overheard two men talking about “doin’ a job at McDonald”? Not “McDonald’s” but “McDonald.” This hypothetical conversation, he said, took place at the food court in the Sydney Shopping Centre, and when he got up to leave, the two men looked at him. Then there were the dark cars that had been following him since the night of the murders; he was afraid they were after him. Trickett told Muise he would have had to hear more than that, if they were really out to get him, but Muise insisted he knew only that they were from Halifax. The fiction he had created in his suicide note the night before was now helping him to explain why he had failed the polygraph—the problem was, Dave Trickett didn’t believe the story.

  When the two arrived at Muise’s home, Trickett went in to talk with his parents. He told them that Darren had attempted suicide, that he had failed the polygraph, and that police believed their son was withholding information about the murders. Darren repeated his claim that he had overheard a conversation and was afraid; that was why he failed the test. The Muises were frightened by what the officer had to say. They wanted to believe Darren. This had to be a mix-up. He might have failed the test, but that didn’t have to mean that he was involved in the crime. They urged their son to be honest, to tell police the whole truth; Trickett said he hoped Muise would listen to his parents, at least, if not to police. Muise went to his room to think about it. A short time later, at the insistence of his parents, the eighteen-year-old phoned Trickett to apologize for upsetting the officer.

  Dave Trickett left and returned to the Sydney detachment to report to Kevin Cleary and Sylvan Arsenault. Late Thursday afternoon, it was decided that a wiretap should be put on Darren Muise’s phone. And if Muise was involved, then Freeman MacNeil’s alibi was no longer solid; at least, it required a much closer look. It would probably be a good idea to tap MacNeil’s phone, too. Even if he wasn’t involved, he was certainly connected to the two people police were now certain had key information. Constable Pat Murphy got to work on the court documents again, and this time he was able to get a judge to approve the wiretaps the following day—the depositions obtained for the tap on Derek Wood were already before the courts, and police simply had to show why further surveillance was needed.

  Freeman MacNeil had no idea he was still on the minds of the investigators probing the murders. He had not heard from them since the day of the killings, and that was fine by him. Muise and Wood were spending a lot of time together, trying to second-guess the RCMP, but MacNeil was staying away from his colleagues in crime. He spoke with them and saw them once or twice, but for the most part he was reacquainting himself with old friends. Still, he was glad he had spoken to Wood shortly after the crime; otherwise, he might not have found out about the gun. It hadn’t been missed, and now it was back where it belonged. MacNeil’s relaxed attitude was obvious when he encountered a friend at a local convenience store. The friend, who had once worked as a security guard with MacNeil, asked him where he had been on the night of the murders; Freeman said he had been at McDonald’s. The two laughed at the macabre humour, then went their separate ways.

  On Thursday, MacNeil and a friend were visiting another stereo stor
e in Sydney. This time he was getting a better set of speakers for the system he was installing in Michelle’s mother’s Impala. The car was sounding great, but he knew it could be even better. When he purchased the speakers, Freeman cashed his unemployment cheque at the store; the McDonald’s money was running out. That was O.K., though. Freeman had a new plan for making money, and this one did not involve breaking the law. He was going to become a taxi driver.

  Freeman MacNeil was driving through Sydney, heading to Whitney Pier, at about the same time Dave Trickett was briefing the chief investigators. When MacNeil got to Michelle’s place, another car was just pulling in. Constables Rod Gillis and Wayne MacDonald had been sent to interview Michelle Sharp to see what she remembered about the night of May 6 and the early morning of May 7: had she in fact sent her boyfriend to his house to collect her asthma inhaler? Gillis was a thin, almost frail-looking man with red hair and an easygoing manner; the shorter, stockier MacDonald seemed deadly serious most of the time, and his thick black hair and dark moustache emphasized his stern military look.

  Freeman MacNeil recognized the unmarked police car, but not the man inside it. Gillis introduced himself to Freeman and asked if they could talk while his partner was meeting with Michelle. She was the one they had come to see, he explained, but as long as Freeman was there, he could help clarify something. Freeman agreed; he wanted the police to know he was cooperative and open with them. Gillis asked MacNeil to review the route he and Darren Muise had taken on the night of the murders, but MacNeil’s answers did not establish which one of them was telling the truth. Gillis believed MacNeil, but he knew that a lie-detector test was the only way to clear the matter up. Muise was supposed to be taking one that day, but Gillis did not know that the young man had failed it. “Look, Freeman, we’re giving a number of the witnesses lie-detector tests, and I was wondering if you could take one for us this evening. It’s not that you’re a suspect or anything; it’s just a way for us to be sure everyone is telling the truth.”

  MacNeil did not want to take the test, but he was equally unwilling to convey to the RCMP that he had anything to hide. “Well, I’m going to look into a taxi permit tonight. Can we do it some other time?”

  “How about tomorrow morning?”

  “Well, I guess so. Where do I have to go?”

  “I can pick you up. We’ll be going to North Sydney for the test. It should only take two or three hours, and then you can leave. Will you be here tomorrow at around eight o’clock?”

  “No, I’ll be at my place on Beaton Road. Do you know where it is?”

  “Yeah, no problem. I’ll meet you there at about eight, then.”

  “O.K.” Freeman left the officer and went into the trailer. Rod Gillis waited in the car until Wayne MacDonald finished taking a statement from MacNeil’s girlfriend. Then the officers headed back to the detachment.

  “MacNeil’s a nice kid. Can’t see him involved in this.” Gillis was as impressed by Freeman MacNeil as Lambe and Eagan had been a week earlier.

  “Yeah, his girlfriend backs his story about the asthma inhaler. What did he have to say about the way he drove home that night?”

  “Same story he told last week.”

  Ten

  True to his word, Rod Gillis arrived at Freeman MacNeil’s house shortly after eight o’clock Friday morning, May 15. It was the beginning of the most successful day the RCMP investigators would have since the murders occurred, a little over a week before. The road to that success would be marked with a string of conflicting and misleading statements from Freeman MacNeil, who would be working with a handicap as he tried to fool the police.

  What MacNeil did not know was that as he was getting ready to go to the North Sydney detachment to take the lie-detector test, his friend Greg Lawrence was making arrangements to meet Sergeant Gary Grant. Lawrence did not want to go to the police station to make his statement; instead, he insisted on going to the Sydney Holiday Inn. As an added precaution, he drove his car to the Sydney Shopping Centre and parked there, taking a taxi to the hotel. Grant and Lawrence met, and the heavy-set young man with the dark eyes and dark hair told his story. In his version of what led to the McDonald’s robbery, Greg Lawrence implicated Freeman MacNeil as the primary player, the man who controlled the conversations and took the lead in asking Lawrence to participate. Lawrence also told Grant that he had seen a small silver handgun in the trunk of the car Freeman was driving. Grant was surprised to learn that the robbery was to have happened a week earlier, but that it was cancelled when a fourth robber failed to show up and Lawrence refused to take that person’s place. Lawrence didn’t phone the police at the time because he said he simply did not believe they were going to go through with the plan.

  At the MacNeil home, Rod Gillis told Freeman’s mother not to worry; her son would be home in a few hours. They travelled in the police car, stopping at Tim Hortons for a coffee, and then went to the detachment, where Freeman MacNeil was introduced to Sergeant Phil Scharf and agreed to take the test; Darren Muise’s failure had apparently made no impression on him—if in fact he had heard about it at all. MacNeil too failed the polygraph, and Phil Scharf expressed his surprise and disappointment. Then he read MacNeil his rights, telling him he did not have to answer any questions. But Scharf wanted an explanation, and he made that clear. When he suggested that MacNeil failed the test because he was afraid rather than involved, MacNeil took what he saw as a lifeline out of the pit into which the polygraph had plunged him. In reality, MacNeil was about to begin a descent into an even deeper pit. He began by agreeing to give the officer a statement; he had been afraid for the safety of his mother and his girlfriend, but now he was prepared to tell the truth.

  MacNeil’s story implicated Darren Muise and Derek Wood in the robbery and killings. He stuck to his original claim that he drove home to pick up his girlfriend’s asthma inhaler, that he didn’t leave her place until after 1:00 a.m., and that on the way, he saw Muise at the side of the road and picked him up. The new part was that Muise allegedly said and did certain things after Freeman picked him up—things that made it clear that Muise and Wood had just robbed the restaurant.

  By early afternoon, MacNeil and Scharf had discussed his new statement and his reasons for not talking to police earlier. Sergeant Scharf asked MacNeil if he would meet with Constable Gillis and his partner, Constable Wayne MacDonald, and go over the details in a formal written statement. MacNeil said he would be happy to do so; he believed that once he gave the statement, he would be able to leave. Then he could help prosecute the other two, or maybe get in touch with them and make a run for it as soon as he got out. But whatever he was planning as he prepared to make a formal statement implicating his partners, the RCMP had something else in mind.

  MacNeil left the polygraph suite and entered a nearby interview room. At 1:42 p.m., MacDonald read Freeman MacNeil his Charter rights and asked if he understood them. MacNeil said he did, and MacDonald and Gillis began the questioning. MacNeil claimed that it was the Monday after the murders when he began to suspect Derek Wood of being involved; he and Wood were in a car, and Wood said he’d kill himself if the girl didn’t pull through. Wood, he said, was all shaky and nervous at the time. That same day, MacNeil also picked up Darren Muise, who gave him ten dollars for gas—and that was unusual, because the guy never had money. Oh, and Muise also told him to say the two of them had spent Wednesday night together if he was asked. MacNeil said he felt threatened when Muise mentioned twins from Halifax who were checking on him daily to make sure he was O.K. Those twin bikers, he said, were only fourteen when one of them killed their father. That was why he lied; he felt forced to protect Darren Muise. Then there was the matter of Darren Muise getting enough money together to move to British Columbia, where he had a job lined up with the Hell’s Angels. It sounded like bullshit when Muise said it, but now he wasn’t so sure.

  MacNeil added more incriminating evidence to his tale: on the drive to get the asthma puffer, Muise asked him not to
drive out Kings Road, the route he usually took. Then Muise borrowed a pair of his sneakers at the house, because his were muddy, and then he asked Freeman to stop by the Grantmire Brook, where he got out to urinate. MacNeil told police Muise left the car with muddy shoes in his hand but returned without them, and that before he got in the car he threw something on the other side of the road. Maybe it was a gun, but MacNeil said he never would have picked Muise up if he thought the guy was carrying a weapon. When the officers hinted that they had information implicating him in the planning of the robbery, MacNeil claimed he had been there when the other two discussed it, but told them he wanted no part of it—their plan included putting people in the freezer if they were found in the restaurant. He didn’t think anyone was supposed to be killed, but he knew that Derek had a gun, because he had left it in Freeman’s car a few weeks earlier. MacNeil also suggested a possible suspect if police felt three robbers had been involved. He gave them Mike Campbell as an accomplice, saying Muise told him that Campbell had driven him back into Sydney after the robbery.