Murder at McDonald's by Phonse; Jessome Read Free Book Online Page B

calm, moving quickly but without panic; he had seen bloodied people before, when he worked as a security guard in downtown Toronto. MacVicar also ran for his car, to radio that his fare been shot in the head and that somebody better get the Mounties over there fast. The calls for help would soon be answered: the ambulance dispatcher had received a second and third call reporting trouble at McDonald’s, and he decided to take a second ambulance and an employee who was working in the company garage, and go out there himself. The second call had come from Sydney police who, along with the RCMP, had been contacted by the taxi company; the third call from an unidentified man, who sounded panicked and would not identify himself.
    At the scene, John MacInnis returned to the doorway and bent over Jimmy Fagan, gingerly pressing a wad of paper towel to the wounded man’s forehead in an effort to stop the bleeding. As he knelt there, MacInnis could hear a telephone ringing inside the restaurant, and he decided to check it out. Following the noise to the manager’s office in the kitchen, he saw Donna Warren slumped on the floor, her shoulders at an awkward angle against the wall. MacInnis reached for the phone on the counter above her head and lifted the receiver; he heard a beeping sound, but no-one was there. Hanging up the phone, he knelt down and tried to help Donna. He pulled her body away from the wall so her neck would not be bent at such a severe angle, hoping this would make it easier for her to breathe. Was that a look of thanks he saw in her eye? He didn’t know.
    Still not feeling any real panic, MacInnis decided to return to the door to tell MacVicar he had found another victim. On his way through the kitchen, he glanced to one side and saw Neil Burroughs lying face down, his head in a widening pool of blood that already extended more than a metre from his body. Burroughs’s head was tilted to the right, his right arm reaching out from his body, his left hand clenched around the leg of one of the big steel sinks. MacInnis lifted Burroughs’s right arm and felt at the wrist for a pulse. There was none. He lowered his ear close to the purple McDonald’s T-shirt to listen for sounds of breathing. There were none.
    MacInnis began to feel unnerved, and he slowly retreated from the restaurant towards the relative safety of the parking lot. As he walked past the stairway that led to the basement, he heard a gurgling sound—and he knew it was not a mechanical sound. The driver suddenly realized that the killers might still be in the building; he was not about to investigate any further.
    Shortly before 1:00 a.m., RCMP Corporal Kevin Cleary finally finished his paperwork. The corporal was working the four-to-twelve shift as supervisor, and was determined to finish a report he’d been working on through the evening. Rather than take the work home, he stayed the extra hour after his shift ended.

    Kevin Cleary, now a sergeant with the New Minas RCMP, joined the Mounties as a teenager, fulfilling a childhood dream. [RCMP photo.]
    Kevin Cleary was six-foot-two and weighed 210 pounds. He was a policeman’s policeman who, after almost twenty years of service, still walked with the erect posture of a cadet in training. Cleary had joined the Mounties at nineteen, fulfilling a childhood dream; by the time he started his training, in Regina, Saskatchewan, he knew the RCMP was for him. He thrilled at the physical challenges the training presented and truly enjoyed the mental discipline instructors demanded of cadets. Cleary, now a corporal and soon to become a sergeant, still loved his chosen career; he still felt he was providing a worthy service to the community.
    As Cleary prepared to head home, something caught his attention. He heard communications officer Stan Jesty radioing a patrol car. Jesty had taken a report on a possible shooting near the Sydney River McDonald’s from the taxi dispatcher