Murder at McDonald's (23 page)

“I'm not,” Muise answered, his tone surprisingly calm, considering he had just been told by a senior member of the RCMP that he was a suspect in one of Canada's most serious multiple murders. Although his voice remained even, his manner had changed. Earlier in their conversation, Muise had been like a typically energetic teenager, moving constantly in his seat, leaning one way and the other, interrupting the sergeant with questions, and making humourous remarks to keep the mood light. Now, Muise was leaning forward slightly in the chair, his left leg locked tightly across the right knee, his right elbow propped on the arm of the chair, and his hand covering his mouth—the way it had when Sergeant Scharf challenged him the night before.

While Sergeant Soucie computes the results of the polygraph, Darren Muise relaxes with a cigarette.

As he sat facing the young man, Soucie remained calm, not wanting to provoke an argument. The police had no legal ground to keep Muise; they wanted him to help voluntarily. “You know something about it,” he said, “and if you can sit here and deny that, there's something going terribly wrong up there in your head.”

“No, I have a conscience, and I'm telling you that I didn't have anything to do with it.” Muise shifted in the chair, now leaning on his left arm and still covering his mouth with his hand, as though he was trying to keep the panic that must have been racing through his mind from bursting out in a confession or a plea for mercy.

“Well, there's something wrong with that conscience, Darren, because people don't do this—normal people don't do this—and you came in here today, and you didn't pass the polygraph test. What's that gotta tell me? It's gotta tell me that—” Soucie leaned forward, pointing a finger at Muise's chest—“that test result shows me something inside your body is reacting to those particular questions in relation to that murder.”

The officer and Muise continued to go around in circles, with one imploring the other to tell the truth. Soucie felt Muise could have become involved sometime after the crime—although the test indicated he had been in the restaurant—but the officer still wanted the young man to tell what he knew. The discussion became heated as Muise insisted on his right to leave. In the other room, Dave Trickett could see it was time to step in, to settle Muise down and keep him from leaving. As Trickett came in, he was briefed by Soucie, as though they had not observed the testing procedure and the resulting conversation. The constable told Muise he was really shocked, and asked him why he had failed the test. As Soucie stood to leave, Trickett sat in the chair across from Muise—who wanted to leave. But Trickett wanted just a minute to try to understand what was going on. He asked Muise if there was something he was trying to hide. Darren Muise wanted no part of another debate with another officer; he just wanted to leave. About then, the friendly tone Dave Trickett had used since the two had met the previous day began to change. Trickett was losing patience with Muise, and he wanted some answers. He did not yell or display anger, but he made it clear he expected an explanation.

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 store 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.”