Long Mile Home: Boston Under Attack, the City's Courageous Recovery, and the Epic Hunt for Justice (2 page)

A chilly afternoon wind is blowing through the city. The stopped runners, after only a few minutes, are getting cold. They begin to huddle together like bees in a hive. All respect for personal space evaporates. Staying close is the only way to keep warm. Michelle Hall, carrying the brain cancer banner for her friend, wraps it around a skinny older runner, maybe in his seventies, who is standing next to her. He appears to be suffering from hypothermia. A woman on his other side wraps herself around him, too. The man is shaking uncontrollably from head to toe. A spectator brings him hot coffee. He tries to drink it, but it makes him vomit. Hall walks him to the apartments along Commonwealth Avenue, searching for help. Someone inside the building comes down with blankets. Two men help the man up to a woman’s apartment, out of the cold.

Runners take refuge wherever they can—in the vestibules of brownstones, in campus buildings at Boston University, in a Bank of America branch, on nearby stoops. No one knows what to do, where to go. So they wait, the cold now stiffening their muscles, seeping into their bones. Residents of nearby apartments bring them water, food, blankets, garbage bags to cut the wind, and armfuls of clothing—yoga pants, exercise jackets, sweatshirts. They offer use of their cell phones. Some bring runners into their homes. All of these small gifts of humanity and generosity will add up to something much larger in the days ahead. They will not be forgotten.

 • • • 

T
he Boston Marathon, for the first time ever, has come to a halt.
The race, begun in 1897, has survived brutal heat waves, unforgiving April nor’easters, wheelchair collisions, fraudulent victors, a freight train blocking the route, a legendary scuffle over women’s participation, and much more. But it has never just stopped. Until now. Some runners start to walk away, hoping to reconnect with their families, or get home, or to their hotels. Locals shepherd the out-of-towners, guiding them through uncertain moments in an unfamiliar place. No one knows much about the tragedy unfolding up ahead. No one even knows which streets are open, which ones are closed. They are walking a block at a time, trying to navigate a changed city, the sounds of emergency vehicles ringing out over the darkening streets.

As runners gradually disperse, the day’s gravity reveals itself in individual moments. For some, it’s a text message or phone call from the finish line. For others, it’s a radio report in a girlfriend’s car after finally arranging a pickup. It’s a breaking-news flash on a TV in a desolate downtown shopping mall. A glorious day has been corrupted by evil, horror, sadness.

The blow is inconceivable and all too real, the shock and grief touching so many, the damage at once widespread and devastatingly precise. Underneath it all, a difficult question presents itself: Why?
Why!
The answer will prove elusive: the illogic of it all, the cowardly calculus, the random cruelty, immune to analysis. In the hours and days ahead, panic and anger will settle over Boston, the city’s vulnerability—
every
city’s vulnerability—exposed. Strength and courage will follow. Hundreds of families will be tested in ways they never imagined. The city, its people, and its marathon, irrevocably changed.

Five lives, one race

I
t was spring, and change was on the way. Heather Abbott didn’t know what kind of change it would be, but she could feel momentum gathering. She had felt it before, and she knew what it meant. It was almost time for her to move on.

April marked the end of the winter off-season in Newport, Rhode Island, when the seaside bars and restaurants belonged to year-round residents like Heather and her friends. In another month tourists would descend, crowding the brick sidewalks and the mansions along Bellevue Avenue. This final quiet moment was one to savor. Heather had grown to love Newport in her four years there. She loved the house she lived in, tucked into the historic district right behind the Elms, one of the city’s opulent turn-of-the-century summer estates. She loved her close-knit group of friends, Tommy and Jason and Jess and Michelle and the rest, who were like the siblings she never had. It was comfortable and sociable and fun, dressing up and frequenting their favorite places every weekend. But Heather had begun to feel restless with the routine. The world outside was waiting, and she was ready for it.

At thirty-eight, the good-natured blonde with the warm brown eyes and the calm, capable manner had built a life on seeing opportunities and stepping out to meet them. She was driven, and in many ways, she was bold. She liked the idea of landing a new job and moving to a new city. She had fallen in love with Charleston, South Carolina, on a short trip south the previous fall, and now she wondered if that small historic city should be her next destination. Closer to home, just seventy miles to the north, Boston was a more obvious choice, near her family and friends. The company she worked for in Rhode Island, Raytheon, was headquartered near Boston; if she wanted to, she could pursue a new job there. Early in April, talking with a friend over dinner in Boston, Heather had contemplated where she might live if she moved to the city. The South End, with its vibrant restaurant scene and beautifully renovated brownstones, was one possibility, but she was also intrigued by the North End, Boston’s historically Italian neighborhood, where elements of the old-world culture persisted amid tourists and newer, upscale hotspots. Sitting across from her, Heather’s friend Steve picked up his phone and typed out a text message to a woman he knew who lived there, inquiring about rents.

Heather knew the woman he was asking. Her name was Roseann Sdoia; they had met through him, and saw each other occasionally at outings with friends. Heather and Roseann usually ran into each other on Patriot’s Day, at the Boston Marathon. Both of them liked to go to the same place near the finish line, a bar and restaurant on Boylston Street called Forum. The marathon was about ten days away, and Heather figured maybe she would see Roseann then. They could talk about the North End and life in Boston. One more step toward figuring out where she would go next.

 • • • 

T
here was nothing like running a marathon in your own city. That was what Boston was to him now, Dr. David King realized—his city. It had taken a long time for him to feel that way. The attachment to the place, the sense of belonging, was still tentative and new to the thirty-nine-year-old doctor. He had gone to college in Tampa and medical school in Miami, and it was there, during long overnights at the Ryder Trauma Center, facing an endless parade of stabbings, gunshot wounds, speedboat accidents, and motorcycle crashes, that he had honed his skills as a trauma surgeon. He had loved Miami, its vibrancy and energy and its work-hard-play-hard mentality. King had met his wife, Anne, a scientist, in college, and she shared his appreciation for the laid-back Floridian lifestyle.

Still, both of them had lasting ties to New England. David had grown up in Rhode Island and his mom and dad were still there. Anne’s parents had retired in New Hampshire, after years of moving around in the military. After King and his wife graduated, it seemed to make sense to look for jobs in Boston. He accepted an internship at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. They moved north—and soon discovered that they did not like Boston one bit. Partly it was the ratty apartment that was all they could afford. The lack of parking didn’t help. Nor did the cold, or the fact that King was working around the clock. He often fell asleep at the table while eating his dinner. They wondered if they could ever fit in, in a medical community where a Harvard degree could seem like a prerequisite. Strangest of all, Bostonians seemed to do nothing but work, or talk about work. The Kings escaped back to Miami as soon as they could.

Six years passed. David had volunteered as an army reserve surgeon while he was in Boston, and in 2008 he was called to serve for several months in Iraq. The couple had a daughter now, and they had seen the bond develop between her and her grandparents in New England. Then an offer came for David from Massachusetts General Hospital—the perfect job, at one of the best hospitals in the country—and they asked themselves, was it worth another try? If they went back, they had to do it with gusto and make the place their own. And so King made it his mission: to import his own attitude and style to a foreign and perhaps unreceptive territory. He bought a big red jacket and an orange hat, a declaration of rebellion in the face of winter’s drabness. Moving through the hospital at high speed but with a gentle touch, he met everyone in his path, from his patients to the janitors mopping the hallways, with an openness and warmth. “How’s your day?” the wiry, blue-eyed doctor would ask the woman handing out clean scrubs from a supply room window. “How are you feeling, my friend?” he asked the injured in their beds.

Still, that first year was hard. He took some calls about jobs back in Florida, toying with the notion of surrender. The second year, he and Anne felt a growing connection to Boston. By the third year, it had deepened to attachment. They had two daughters now, giving them new appreciation for the city’s museums and parks. They lived in Cambridge, just across the river from Mass General, and he walked to work every day, while Anne went to nearby Kendall Square, near MIT, to a start-up company where she helped develop more effective cancer drugs. He had a lab at the hospital and a little time for the research he loved, trying to solve problems related to his work, like how to control bleeding better after trauma. It was still hard being on call for twenty-four hours at a stretch, sleeping at the hospital and missing his kids, but life was good. The marathon in Boston was a day to celebrate that. A few weeks earlier, he had feared he would have to miss the hometown race because of back problems, and the thought had pained him more than he once could have imagined. But as April 15 approached, King felt his confidence growing. This Boston Marathon—
his
marathon—would be his fastest yet.

 • • • 

S
he was a Boston girl through and through. And she was proud of it. There wasn’t a professional sports jersey Krystle Campbell didn’t own—Red Sox, Patriots, Bruins, Celtics, even the Revolution, the Major League Soccer franchise—and she wore them like badges of honor. Occasionally, she would get game tickets, and invite her father, Billy Jr., along.
Take a friend
, he would often say.
Don’t waste the ticket on silly old Dad
. She lit up inside those stadiums and arenas, throwing herself into the role of New England sports partisan. She loved tailgating, too. And it wasn’t just sports that drew her out. The twenty-nine-year-old was game for almost anything—hitting a new bar in Boston, Fourth of July fireworks on the banks of the Charles River, a night at the symphony. “She loved the life of the city,” her father said.

On Patriot’s Day, the holiday that celebrated Boston’s unique character more than any other, Krystle often joined the throngs along the sidelines of the marathon. The race was just her kind of thing, a perfect marriage of sport, party, and civic pride. Plus, if anyone deserved a little respite, a chance to get off the clock and decompress, it was Krystle. In recent years, she’d worked relentlessly, unable to say no, to let things go slack, to see a job done halfway. She couldn’t help it. That was her nature, and the way she’d been raised. After watching Mom and Dad put in long hours, working hard was all she knew.

For much of the previous decade, Krystle had been a trusted deputy at Jasper White’s Summer Shack, a seafood-oriented restaurant company with outposts around the Boston area. Managing, waitressing, serving drinks, setting up tables, washing dishes, loading trucks—she had done it all. From the moment she started working there, in 2005, she announced herself as a competent leader. Her work ethic was almost freakish. Nowhere was that more evident than on Spectacle and Georges Islands in Boston Harbor, where Summer Shack had established seasonal eateries and a bustling business catering corporate events, clambakes, and weddings. In the warmer months, she put in eighty-hour weeks on the islands, often stepping onto the first boat out and the last boat back—and that was only if she wasn’t sleeping over. With her maternal instincts, she became the de facto leader of a motley crew of people who worked on and around the islands, employed by the city, state, private vendors, and nonprofits. By the force of her personality, they grew into a kind of family. The community became known, simply, as the islands. Krystle was the island girl.

She had an easy class about her. After the hard physical work of setting up for a big event, she would effortlessly slip into a cocktail dress to play hostess, as if she had looked like that forever. Then once the guests were gone, she would immediately throw on her shorts, tank top, and flip-flops. When an especially demanding function was over, she was known to say, “How did we pull that off?” The answer, to everyone else, was clear: It was her—her energy, savvy, and attention to detail. That wasn’t how she saw it, though. It was always the team that made it happen. Her refrain, once the lights came on and the VIPs had left, was often this: “My fucking guys are awesome.” When it was finally time to clock out, she could play as hard as she worked. She liked to have fun. She wouldn’t turn down a shot of Jack Daniel’s. “She lived all the way through,” said Tim Getchell, a close friend who helped manage the islands for the state.

When things went wrong, Krystle could hit the curveballs. On June 9, 2011, she was dealt a big one. Every year, the Boston Harbor Island Alliance, the nonprofit organization that promotes use of the islands, throws a huge fund-raising gala for several hundred donors and bigwigs. They come out from the city on boats, enjoy an evening overlooking the ocean, and then head back. On this Thursday night, the weather had seemed fine. Krystle and her crew were setting up on Georges Island for a party of five hundred. But just as guests began arriving, a storm system rolled in. The sky opened up. Thunder clapped overhead. The lightning was so treacherous they couldn’t use the metal docks for a time. The wind blew hard. The power went out. Water came pouring off a hill in front of Fort Warren, the island’s Civil War–era fortress, flooding the tent where they had set up the dinner tables. A disaster, plain and simple. Then Krystle took command.

She hiked up her dress, ditched her shoes, and began, with her team, bailing out the tent with buckets. With Getchell’s help, they spread gravel and sand. They laid function tables down like bridges over the rivers that had formed. They powered up the generators. As the guests—many of them in evening dresses and tailored suits—began coming to the tent, Krystle and her staff made an announcement. They wanted everyone to go barefoot; the high heels, flats, and formal shoes just weren’t going to cut it in the mud. She didn’t care if the guests were big-shot CEOs or wealthy philanthropists. This was how it was going to be. They would have to make the best of it. And they did. The VIPs embraced the soggy atmosphere. The gala became a mud party for the ages, an unforgettable event that was, at the time, the alliance’s highest-grossing fund-raiser ever. That night, Krystle and a colleague stayed on the island to break everything down, sleeping, in their dresses, in the cab of a Ryder truck. When they crawled out the next morning their feet were still caked in mud. And they were smiling.

 • • • 

T
his year’s marathon had to be better than the last. How could it be worse? The temperature on race day in 2012 had reached 89 degrees. Great for the beach, disastrous for a marathon. Some 2,200 people required medical attention, and more than 150 were brought to hospitals. No, that marathon experience was one nobody wanted to repeat, especially not Dave McGillivray, fifty-eight, the longtime director of the race. Weather was the one thing out of his control. No amount of preparation, or contingency planning, could change it. No irate phone call could fix it. No army of volunteers could make it right. Every year, it was Mother Nature’s little game, and it drove McGillivray crazy.

The Boston Marathon had been his baby since 1988, after the Boston Athletic Association, which put the whole thing on, first brought him in to professionalize the race. Over that quarter century, McGillivray’s name had become synonymous with the event. He was its public face, its spirit guide, its minute-by-minute micromanager, intimately involved in everything from where the portable restrooms go at the starting line to getting all the runners and wheelchair racers safely across the finish. Every year, the marathon seemed to get more complex and more popular, a bigger test of his chops. He loved it, though. The pressure, he always said, was a privilege. McGillivray staged other road races and delivered motivational speeches. But the Boston Marathon was the sun in his solar system. April in Boston was unimaginable without him.

He’d come from Medford, not far from where Krystle Campbell would grow up years later. He was the youngest of five in a working-class household that prized faith, honored commitments to the point of obsession, and taught that hard work could overcome anything. His father, a master electrician for a can company, kept a checklist inside the medicine cabinet where his children had to record their toothbrushing. When he was young, all McGillivray ever wanted to do was be an athlete. His genes had other ideas. He was short: five four by the time he was finished growing. It was a disqualifier, as a kid, on the courts and fields. He was chosen last for pickup games and cut from the high school basketball team. Right after the coach delivered the bad news, he challenged the team’s center to a game of one-on-one and beat him. He went home, found a black permanent marker, and wrote
PLEASE GOD MAKE ME GROW
on a piece of cardboard, which he hung above his bed with masking tape.