Murder at McDonald's (5 page)

Then he headed over to Tim Hortons. He jumped into the brown-and beige Chevy Impala and confronted Muise and MacNeil; he had tried calling them—why hadn't they answered? Apparently they hadn't heard the pay phone ringing. Well, they would go ahead anyway; after all, Wood had left the door open, so they could still get inside. Freeman MacNeil would play a more active role; he would go inside and guard the basement door while Muise went up to the kitchen and Wood waited for the all-clear to try the safe. The young men drove away from Tim Hortons and onto Kings Road, past the front of McDonald's and underneath the Sydney bypass. On the other side of the bypass, they entered a residential area and turned onto a dirt road, following it almost to the end, where it intersected with a secluded gravel road. There, the robbers stepped out into the night; they were at the corner of Britannia Street and Sheridan Drive. In front of them, across the bypass, was their target. The three walked across the field beside the highway, aglow in deep yellow light, then hustled across the brightly illuminated four lanes to the field on the other side—the one bordering the McDonald's property. They moved quietly towards the building, approaching the side away from the driveway, then made their way down to the front corner, where the basement door, still slightly ajar, awaited them. They stepped into the building and pulled the door shut behind them.

Derek Wood, Darren Muise, and Freeman MacNeil made their way to this basement door, stepped inside, and closed it behind them. [RCMP crime scene photo.]

Meanwhile, Arlene MacNeil and Donna Warren were getting ready to leave the basement office where Arlene had been sorting the children's party favours.

Once the robbers had closed the basement door, they found themselves in a dark, windowless little porch outside the crew training room. The cement floor was covered with dirt and leaves that had blown in beneath the door. They groped their way to the inner door, still propped open by Wood's knapsack. Before entering the training room with his accomplices, Wood took the small silver handgun out of the pouch around his waist. Muise pulled a rubber Hallowe'en mask over his head and took two knives from a sheath on his ankle. The mask was in the likeness of a ghoulish, white-haired old man with horribly distorted features. Freeman MacNeil held a shovel handle, in case he had to knock anyone out, and there were ropes in his pockets to tie them up afterwards. All three wore dark clothing. They crept into the crew room, allowing the door to swing shut behind them but failing to notice that the door did not close fully. Instead, it came to rest again on the beige knapsack Wood had placed in the threshold. The pack had a label sewn into its seam:
ESCAPE
.

Donna and Arlene were on their way out when they stopped suddenly at the sight of the three men creeping towards them. The men, too, came to a standstill as they realized they were not alone. Donna's heart pounded when she saw the Hallowe'en mask; she was prepared to open and empty the safe if they asked. Long ago, she had promised her mother that if anyone tried to rob the restaurant while she was on shift, she would gladly cooperate in order to avoid any trouble. She used to joke that she'd even carry the safe out to the car for them. Donna knew that resisting a robber could cause problems, not only for her, but also for Arlene and Neil, and as the manager, she felt responsible. But her fear turned to confusion when she recognized the small, sullen-faced blond man. Derek Wood was making no attempt to hide himself; he just stood there, looking first at her and then at the two men he was with.

Arlene, like Donna, quickly ruled out robbery when she realized the man was Derek Wood. As for the idiot in the Hallowe'en mask, he was obviously someone who thought scaring people was a funny thing to do. Arlene was angry at having been frightened, but she didn't want to show these three jerks that they'd succeeded in making her heart pop out of her chest. Donna would have to do something, she thought; the restaurant was closed, and Derek had no right bringing people inside, joke or no joke. She decided to lighten the moment.

“Is this a joke or What?” And she laughed.

It was the last time Arlene MacNeil's agile young mind would so quickly assess a situation and draw a reasonable conclusion—a conclusion that in this case could not have been further from the terrifying reality of what was about to happen. This was no joke.

“What's going on?” Donna demanded.

Derek Wood exchanged a long look with his partners. During the countless hours of discussing their options, a certain amount of macho bravado had emerged: Darren Muise claimed he would use his share of the haul to fly to Vancouver, where he had lined up a job running drugs for the Hell's Angels motorcycle gang; Freeman MacNeil showed his seriousness about the plan by obtaining the gun. Although their talk may have been nothing more than bravado—three young men trying to outdo each other as they dug themselves deeper and deeper into a plot they were, in fact, ill-equipped to carry out—at the moment when Derek Wood looked at his partners, he decided he was involved in a big-time score with big-time criminals. And he would not be the weak link.

Donna and Arlene came through the open door to face the killers. The colourful sticks Arlene had been counting were still in her hand when she fell, face forward. [RCMP crime scene photo.]

As his partners looked down, Wood turned to the young women and raised his arm. Arlene saw the arm come up and saw the bright flash, but she did not feel or hear anything. She knew Donna was still beside her; she could see her friend's shoes as the floor came rushing up in a crazy, tilting dream. Arlene had fallen face down, her hand still clasped around the sticks she had been counting for the child's birthday party that was supposed to be held later that day. Donna crouched on the floor beside her friend, confusion filling her mind. “My God, Arlene, we're going to die!” she screamed, putting her face close to her friend's ear. “They're going to kill us!” She could see blood beginning to pool on the floor near Arlene's face, but her friend was breathing; she was still alive. Donna looked up to see the masked man standing over her, gesturing with a knife and screaming at her to stay there. She wanted to help Arlene, but all she could do was cry. Donna wanted her mother, she wanted her bed, she wanted her cat; she did not want to be lying on the floor watching blood pour from a tiny hole beside her friend's nose. Donna Warren's mind went wild with panic, but she could not move.

The stairs up to the kitchen: the conveyor belt to the right is the one that broke down shortly after Derek Wood started his job, prompting the plan to rob McDonald's. [RCMP crime scene photo.]

“Hurry up!” Freeman MacNeil yelled at Wood.

Derek Wood ran upstairs.

Up in the kitchen, Neil Burroughs was scrubbing the sinks. Because the steel door at the bottom of the basement stairs was closed, and because there was a lot of noise from the equipment in the restaurant, he couldn't have heard the shot, or the screams from the basement. Burroughs was down on one knee, wiping the stainless-steel skirt below the sinks, when he suddenly felt weak and fell to the floor. Something was wrong, but he could not figure out what had happened. Blood was coming from his ear, and there was a terrible taste in his mouth. He could see the blood beginning to pool on the floor, and knew he needed help.

As he began to push himself up from the floor, Neil realized someone was standing beside him: shocked and confused, he did not see the mask the man was wearing as a threat. Neil Burroughs wanted help—he
needed
help—and he hoped this stranger would deliver it. He looked into Darren Muise's eyes, and Muise stared back at the helpless man in front of him. Burroughs sought sympathy, and help, but instead he saw, in those eyes, a frightening expression heightened by the ghoulish rubber mask that framed them. Muise took a brown-handled hunting knife and plunged it five centimetres into the soft tissue on the left side of Burroughs' neck, then pulled it back in a clumsy, failed attempt to severe the jugular vein.

Face down on the cold tile, blood streaming from his ear and neck, Neil Burroughs began to think of Justin, his three-year-old son, and Julia, his wife and best friend. He was going to teach Justin to play ball this summer; whatever was going on here would not prevent him from doing that. Once again, Burroughs pushed himself up from the floor. In the spinning confusion around him, he now saw two men. Maybe this new stranger would understand; maybe he would help.

“Help me! Please help me!” Burroughs could not be sure if the words were coming out, if the tall stranger could hear his plea. He could see his blood covering the arms of the masked man, who was still standing there; he could hear as the man shouted excitedly to the newcomer: “The guy won't die! Derek shot him, and I cut his throat, and he still won't die!” The masked man ran off, and Burroughs again begged: “Please, please help me!”

It made no sense. He could see that the stranger was listening, but why was he raising that shovel handle? The young father was kneeling now, looking into the face of the stranger, trying to understand what was happening to him. Why did someone he did not know want to hurt him? He was just cleaning the kitchen, doing his job, trying to support Justin and Julia. Why was this happening? Neil felt a crushing blow across his forehead and against his nose as the handle swung violently down. Freeman MacNeil looked on as Burroughs fell to the floor once again.

But his misery would not end with that vicious blow. Nor would the struggle. Unable to lift his head, Burroughs extended a pleading hand for help; he could feel the steel front of the sink, but it was too slippery for him to pull himself up. As the strength ebbed from his body, Burroughs felt something in his left hand, and he grabbed hold of it—something solid, something to cling to. It was one of the legs holding up the sink. He looked up to see a flash, then darkness, as a bullet entered his brain through a small hole just above his right eye. He did not feel the third and final shot, fired with the gun pressed firmly against the back of his head.

While Neil Burroughs was fighting in vain for his life, Donna Warren was experiencing a terrifying ordeal of her own. After shooting Burroughs in the ear, Derek Wood had returned downstairs to find the young manager. “C'mon, bitch, get up.” Wood grabbed Donna, led her upstairs to the tiny office, and ordered her to open the safe.

Donna's hands shook, tears blurring her vision as she wrestled with the dial. “I'm going as fast as I can.” She wept, gasping for air, trying to remember a combination that she knew perfectly well. Finally the last number clicked in, and the door swung open. Donna, who had been kneeling as she fought with her panic and the lock, rose to her feet, hoping that Derek would let her go back to help Arlene, and crying uncontrollably as she thought of her friend.

Suddenly she felt a terrible pain and a spinning in her mind; barely aware that she had collapsed, she found herself on the floor, the top of her shoulders against the wall, her legs folded beneath her, her head tilted forward as she watched Derek Wood rifle the safe. Everything around her began to close in, as though she were looking through a narrowing tunnel. The masked man came to the door and gave Wood a kitbag, then left. She saw Wood get to his feet. A flash—and then a bullet entered her right eye; Donna never realized she had already been shot in the back of the head.