Murder at McDonald's (22 page)

For me, Thursday marked the first opportunity to walk through the McDonald's restaurant at the centre of the story I had been working on night and day, for a week. The restaurant had been turned back over to the company by police, and its doors had been opened to the public that morning. Getting inside the restaurant with a camera was a tough sell—McDonald's did not want to expose the restaurant or its employees to that kind of attention—but fortunately I had developed a relationship with Garfield Lewis years before. He knew me and trusted me, and after the first rejection I spoke to him directly about the story I wanted to do. It would look at the corporate response to the crisis, how counsellors had been hired to work with the employees. One of those psychologists was Dr. John Gainer, who with Constable Dave Roper had accompanied employees on a walk-through at the restaurant before it reopened. He agreed to an interview, and he discussed the problems being experienced by the hundreds of teens who had taken part in the program in the past few days. Dr. Gainer concluded that it was not surprising for the employees to want to return to work. Rather than prompt a mass exodus, the crime had brought the employees closer together, he said; they had become a tight-knit group, who drew on each other's strength.

For me, walking through the kitchen and down to the basement office for the interview was strange. The polished ceramic tiles showed no sign of what had happened, but I felt as though I was violating something. Innocent lives had ended where I stood, and now the space had returned to its everyday, utilitarian purpose. The significance of the victims seemed somehow diminished. I had been at murder scenes before, but never had I felt anything quite like it.

McDonald's employees at work hours after the restaurant reopened—a week after the murders. [Print from ATV video tape.]

Later that day, Dave Trickett was instructed to pursue his relationship with Darren Muise—get him over to see the second polygraph operator and get him hooked up to that machine. The police were now convinced that he was a young man with something to hide, that perhaps he was trying to protect his friend Derek Wood. They did not think he was involved in the crime itself; in fact, many officers still believed Wood was only an accessory, who left the door open for someone. But police believed they could get to the killers by focusing on Muise and Wood, and they decided someone should talk to Freeman MacNeil again, to find out what he had to say about the strange route Muise claimed they took that night. Muise's story did not match MacNeil's; maybe they could both be persuaded to take polygraph exams.

Constable Trickett decided to phone Muise and take him up on his offer to consider talking with the new polygraph operator—would he come and meet with Sergeant Mitch Soucie? Muise said he had a cold and was not feeling well enough to take the test or meet the operator that day. Dave Trickett did not believe him; he left the detachment and drove to Muise's house. When he arrived and went in to see Darren, he noticed there were no signs of a cold—no sniffling or coughing or watery eyes. “Look, Darren, you're not sick. You're just trying to avoid this test. Come on, man, you've got to help us on this.”

“No, no, I want to help. I helped ya yesterday. It's just I'm not feeling good, that's all.”

“Don't make excuses, Darren. Let's get this thing done.”

“Well, I can go over and meet this new guy, but I don't have to take the test if I don't want to, right?”

“I already told you, Darren, you don't have to take it—but we're asking all witnesses to do it. You know how serious this thing is.”

Once again, Darren Muise and Dave Trickett went to North Sydney, but Sergeant Soucie was not ready for them, so they headed out for a coffee. The two were in a drive-through line at a nearby Tim Hortons when Muise rolled up his sleeve and pulled a bandage from a cut on his wrist, showing Trickett what he'd done the night before but not admitting that the injuries were self-inflicted. Trickett looked at the cuts and immediately thought that Muise was misleading him; those straight cuts were not likely to have been accidental, although he could see that they were only superficial. The two were driving along, drinking coffee and talking, when they got a message on the car radio. It was time to go meet the new polygrapher. While they were returning to the detachment, Muise had some questions. “I know the sentence for murder is twenty-five years, but is the sentence for three murders three times twenty-five years or just twenty-five?”

“Why are you asking that?”

“Oh, I'm just curious. I was wonderin', too—does a plea bargain mean a shorter sentence?”

“I'm not a lawyer, Darren, I'm a policeman.”

The two drove to the detachment in silence. Darren Muise found himself back in the polygraph suite, but the officer he met was more low-key, more like Dave Trickett. They got along, and Muise agreed to take the test. Muise allowed himself to be hooked up to a machine that two experts had already told him would hang him out to dry if he lied. The eighteen-year-old believed he knew better than they did, though. Muise was a fairly accomplished storyteller, and he knew how to concentrate—something his extensive martial-arts training had taught him. He could fool the machine, and then he'd be home free. Maybe avoiding it had been a mistake in the first place. After all, if the machine was as good as these guys claimed, it would be allowed in court. No, he figured people could fool them, and he was going to try.

Before the test could begin, the operator and the subject would have to get to know one another. They discussed how the machine worked and then began to talk about Darren—things he did as a child, things he thought and felt as a young adult. Darren enjoyed this part of the test; he loved talking with people, especially when he was the subject of the conversation. He told Sergeant Soucie that the only time he had broken the law was when he took a bag of chips from a candy store as a child. He said he did it for his brother.

Finally, at a little after three in the afternoon, Sergeant Soucie connected Muise to the lie-detector machine. Soucie may have been more easy-going in his manner than Phil Scharf, but he was still all business. Like Scharf, Soucie was a little on the short side for a policeman, but his demeanour made him less-threatening. He had the solid build of a man whose work could entail physical exertion, but who wore a business suit. His slightly thinning, wavy hair made him look a little older than he was, and the whole image was more like a middle-aged banker, or even a schoolteacher, than a man set on catching a killer. Muise was at ease as the sergeant tightened black straps across his chest and lower abdomen, and as sensors were placed on the fingertips of his left hand. On his right arm, an inflatable strap—the kind used in blood-pressure tests—was tightened between his elbow and shoulder.

With the sensors in place, Soucie demonstrated the effectiveness of his machine. He conducted a sample test, asking Muise to select a numbered card from a small pack of test cards he kept with the polygraph kit. The sergeant then told Muise to memorize the number from the card and return it to the pack. Muise seemed happy to take part in the fake test; he chatted with the sergeant as the cards were shuffled and the machine was readied. The test might be intended to show how effective the polygraph could be, but it also would give Muise a dry run at attempting to fool it. Soucie told the young man to answer no as he was asked if each card from the pack was the one selected; Muise closed his eyes and sat perfectly still in the oversized polygraph chair. He did as instructed, and he concentrated on relaxing and keeping his breathing, pulse, and sweat glands under control.

“Was your card number 16?”

“No.”

“Was your card number 5?”

“No.”

Soucie continued through the deck of cards and then told Muise to relax. The test was over. He looked at the results on the sheet of paper streaming from the polygraph, then sorted through his pile of cards, selected one, and dropped it to the table. It was the card Muise had chosen; the machine had worked. The sergeant showed Muise where his body had reacted to the lie. “If you look here, you get an artificially high reading when I asked you about the number 16. That's normal, because it was the first question. There is no number 16 in my deck; it's just a way to ease into the test—the same way I will ask you control questions during the real test. But if you look further along here, the readings get high again when I ask you about this number—it was your card, and you were lying, as I told you to.”

Muise leaned over the chair, getting closer to the machine and examining the chart. “That was pretty cool. Can I try it again?” Muise wanted another practice run.

“No, it's a waste of time to allow people to try to fool the machine. You know now how it works. It's time to conduct the real test.” The sergeant removed the sensors from Muise's fingers and dried them. Then, for a second time, he told the young man what he would ask him during the exam, assuring him there would be no trick questions. It's important for a subject to be relaxed during a polygraph test; if the person being questioned expects a trick from the operator, the anxiety can skew the results. That's why the operator always asks, at some point during the test: “Do you think I will ask you any questions other than the ones we reviewed?” This allows the polygraph technician to determine whether or not the subject had such a concern, and prevent the subject who fails a text from arguing that it was because he was afraid of what might be asked.

At 3:14 p.m., Darren Muise was ready to be questioned again by Sergeant Soucie, but this time there would be no card trick. Muise concentrated, trying again to will his body to ignore the anxiety he was feeling. Soucie asked the control questions that he had worked out during his lengthy preliminary discussion with Muise—questions such as: “Aside from the time you took a bag of chips from a store, have you ever committed a crime for which you were not caught?”

“No,” Muise answered.

Mixed in with the control questions were the ones Muise was afraid of, but had tried to prepare his body to ignore. “Last week, did you rob McDonald's restaurant?”

“No.”

“Last week, were you involved, in any way, with the robbery at McDonald's?”

Darren Muise, hooked up to the lie-detector equipment, considers his answer to the police question: ‘Were you involved with the robbery?'

“No.”

“Are you now hiding anything from the police about this robbery?”

“No.”

Soucie wanted to run through the test a number of times; between each session, he removed the finger sensors and dried them, talking casually with Muise, who leaned over in his chair looking at the paper and machine. Each time, the key questions were repeated, but the sequence and order were altered. Finally, the sergeant felt he had enough data. He told Muise it would take a few minutes to analyze the results and asked him to remain in the room. If Darren Muise was afraid he'd fail, or was nervous about what would happen if he did, it was not apparent from his actions. Muise slouched back in the chair, drinking water and enjoying a cigarette; he blew smoke rings into the air and played with the cigarette on the edge of a Styrofoam cup he was using as an ashtray. Sitting in his blue cotton button-down shirt and watching smoke rise to the ceiling, Muise looked as if he did not have a care in the world. But his posture and demeanour were about to change.

Sergeant Soucie returned to the polygraph suite and informed Muise that he had failed the test. The sergeant told him how disappointed he was; he thought they had a good test, and now he wanted to know why Muise had lied to him. Soucie neither raised his voice nor appeared angry as he began to debate with Muise; for his part, Muise reacted innocently, as though it had to be a mistake. Soucie wasn't buying that routine; he'd seen it too many times before. “From these charts today, there's no doubt in my mind you're connected with this situation—the murders at McDonald's,” he said.