Long Mile Home: Boston Under Attack, the City's Courageous Recovery, and the Epic Hunt for Justice (8 page)

BOOK: Long Mile Home: Boston Under Attack, the City's Courageous Recovery, and the Epic Hunt for Justice
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Once upon a time, the
Boston Globe
printed the names of all Boston Marathon entrants prior to the race. Spectators would then bring the paper to the course as a guide, calling out to each runner as he passed. “
When you ran Boston, you felt a respect and admiration that runners garnered nowhere else,” 1968 men’s champion Amby Burfoot wrote in a 2013 essay for
Runner’s World
. “In other races, we were often mocked. Boston welcomed us, honored us.” Plenty of cities—Chicago and New York, to name two prominent ones—have developed their own marathon traditions. But the spirit of the Boston Marathon has remained distinct, its hold on runners—and on the city’s soul—lasting and exceptional.

 • • • 

A
pril in New England was famously fickle. Runners had faced winter-like conditions in some years and unforgiving heat in others. The prospects for this Monday, April 15, 2013, had seemed tailor-made, as if McGillivray had ordered it up: pleasantly cool, a high near 50 degrees, a mix of sun and clouds. As he walked the starting line, he saw smiles on runners’ faces. He saw the gears of his machine turning, all the pieces moving as designed. His year-long planning and relentless attention were paying off. The 117th Boston Marathon was poised to go off as well as could be.

The only break from routine came just before the 10:00
A.M.
start. The race organizers asked everyone to pause for twenty-six seconds of silence, one second for every victim of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, four months earlier. McGillivray and his team had scripted a brief ceremony and arranged it so runners across Hopkinton could take part. In the midst of a noisy morning, a blanket of quiet settled over the area. Runners put their heads down or looked to the sky. McGillivray joined the silent gathering, right at the starting line, moved by how still thousands of runners could be. After it was over, he recorded his emotions on his iPhone:
That was one of the most amazing moments in forty years of my involvement with the Boston Marathon.

The power of it struck David King, too. One of his daughters was a first grader, like the twenty children killed in the school shooting. As the silence deepened around him at the starting line, he thought about the randomness of what had happened in Newtown, how it could have been anyone’s kids. King had worried more about his children since going to Iraq as an army surgeon—the experience of war had fundamentally altered his sense of his own and his family’s vulnerability—but now he felt humbled by horrors he couldn’t imagine. Flooded with gratitude for his family, he felt lucky to know they were safe. As the opening ceremonies wound to a close, King began to focus on his race. He needed to figure out when to turn on his GPS tracker, the device he wore around his wrist to tell him how fast he was running and whether he was on pace. The trick was to activate the tracker just before the gun, giving it sufficient time to find his position but not enough time to needlessly drain the battery. Everyone else in the corral around him was attempting the same feat, the chirps from their gadgets filling the air as if they stood in a summer meadow full of crickets. King pushed the On button. The starting gun cracked and the elite runners took off. Moving slowly toward the starting line behind them, he saw that his tracker was still searching.
Come on
, he thought.
Almost there; come on!
Just as he crossed the line, the bars popped up on the screen. It was a satisfying way to kick things off: stepping onto the storied course in perfect sync with distant satellites circling the Earth.

In the first four miles of the marathon, the elevation of the course drops some three hundred feet, creating the illusion that the race is all downhill. That’s partly why in 1990, the national governing body for track and field sports ruled that Boston’s marathon could not be the source of world or national records. The downhill start has long troubled elite runners, because it speeds the pack of amateurs along; four-time winner Bill Rodgers once said it allowed runners “
who aren’t necessarily world-class” to stick around long enough to be “bothersome.” When he first ran Boston, King had felt the same annoyance as inexperienced runners bolted down the hill behind him, nipping at his heels. It took half a mile before the swarm would thin enough that he could start running with his normal stride length. In time, though, he had come to embrace the madness of the start, the distinctively careening, jammed-in, jostling movement forward. It was crazy and uncomfortable, and it felt like home.

McGillivray was also in his accustomed spot, well out ahead on the course. He had hopped on the back of a motorcycle that would take him to Boston, always several paces ahead of the leading runners. This was how he kept tabs on everything: whether the green wax paper cups of Gatorade and Poland Spring water were stacked correctly, whether the volunteers were at their posts, how spectators were behaving. He scanned the course for trouble—an errant car, a bicyclist riding where he shouldn’t be. But once he was out there on the road, he began to feel like he had handed the race off, giving it to the runners and volunteers and police and everyone else strategically positioned all the way into downtown. It was like a relay. McGillivray had run the initial legs. Now he was passing the baton.

 • • • 

T
he first few miles went quickly for King. The runners passed from Hopkinton into Ashland just before the two-mile mark; around mile four, as the surrounding landscape changed from rural to suburban to commercial, the pack had to navigate around “three-mile island,” a cement island and dreaded tripping hazard in the middle of the road. At mile five in Ashland they passed the Sri Lakshmi Temple, with its fifty-foot tower and ornate statues of Hindu gods. It was near this spot in 1967, when the marathon was officially for men only, that outraged race official Jock Semple chased runner Kathrine Switzer through fat snowflakes, yelling at her to “get out of my race!” The confrontation—which ended with Semple being knocked down by Switzer’s boyfriend, and Switzer being banned from amateur running—helped bring about the inauguration of a coed marathon five years later. It became one of the most famous chapters in marathon history.

King passed the Framingham bars and their patrons’ inevitable offers of swigs of beer, and the spot near mile seven
where a local Dixieland band used to play on the roof of R. H. Long’s Cadillac dealership every year, serenading runners below with “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Around the halfway point, King arrived at one of his favorite places in the race, the mile-thirteen stretch past Wellesley College, where students at one of New England’s best-known women’s schools come out to watch in droves. Yelling at top volume for everyone who passes—a tradition almost as old as the marathon itself—the students create a “scream tunnel” that some marathoners find obnoxious or distracting but that King loved and drew on for renewed enthusiasm. He slowed down enough to slap high fives along the roadside, and scattered a few sweaty kisses on eager recipients waving signs like
KISS ME, I’M A SENIOR
and
KISSES MAKE YOU RUN FASTER
. The noisy uplift of support always tempted him to speed ahead. But he told himself to hold steady, to stick to his plan: every mile at exactly the same pace.

As he finished miles seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen, passing graceful Georgian mansions and the highway rumble of Route 128, King was on track to achieve his goal: a three-hour, ten-minute race. Then came the exhaustion, settling in at mile twenty, deeper, sooner, and more threatening than he had expected. Afraid that cramps might cripple him, the doctor slowed just slightly. Now he was in his own box, his own lonely struggle, in the midst of all the other runners doing the same thing. He hit mile twenty-two—the “haunted mile,” as marathon legend Johnny Kelley called it—the point where the body’s reserves of fuel and energy are depleted and a runner’s focus narrows to survival. He came to Cleveland Circle, and more clusters of college students. He kept going onto Beacon Street and into Brookline and on to Coolidge Corner. He was almost in Boston now, entering the final miles of the race. He crossed over the Massachusetts Turnpike and descended into Kenmore Square. This was the homestretch, with less than two miles to the finish. His family was up ahead, waiting for him. He turned his gaze toward the left side of Commonwealth Avenue, scanning the crowd as he fought through the pain, closer and closer to the turn onto Hereford Street. And then he saw them, his mother and father and Anne and their two little girls, screaming for Daddy.

King veered toward them. He always stopped here to hug his children; he always somehow found the breath to tell them how glad he was to see them. He knew some other runners might not sacrifice the time—after all, he would see them soon at the finish line. But he meant to send a message, that his girls were more important to him than anything—certainly more important than the marathon clock. The meeting was a high point, and it would carry him to the finish.

Turning left onto Boylston Street, he had run twenty-six miles. That left about 350 yards, or 1,050 feet, to the finish line. The crowd here was dense and deafening, thousands of people packed in so close together beneath the skyscrapers they looked like the colored dots of a pointillist painting. In the street, between the barricades containing the twin rivers of spectators, the pace of the race was quickening. Runners who had walked up Heartbreak Hill or walked through Kenmore Square—none of them were walking now. The finish line up ahead was the same one the winners had crossed just an hour earlier. The crowd was screaming now just as it had for the winners. It was the same race, and they were all in it together. King took the time to register the magic of that. He thought about the time, in 2009, that he had fallen down in the street after crossing the finish line, his face contorted in pain, and how another runner had come to him beaming, asking how he felt. King had mumbled something about cramps. “You should feel great,” the other man had told him with conviction. “We just finished the Boston Marathon!”

King crossed the finish line and slowed to a walk. Then, as he always did, he stopped and turned around to face the runners coming in behind him. Standing there a minute, looking back down Boylston Street, he listened to the roar of the enormous crowd and watched the runners’ faces as they finished. He considered the magnitude of what they had accomplished. He tried, for just one moment, to consider what it meant. Then he turned back into the natural flow of traffic, away from the finish and back toward his regular life, the search for water and bananas and his family. They would be coming to find him in their designated meeting place, by the sign marked
K
, the first letter of his last name.

Around the same time, at 1:45
P.M.
, McGillivray sent a text message to Tom Grilk, the executive director of the Boston Athletic Association. With everything appearing okay at the finish line—with the winners long done, and thousands more having already crossed behind them—McGillivray thought the time had come to put on his Adidas and begin his own run.
Hi Tom
, he wrote.
All seems fine so may head out soon. Okay? Great job!

Beat it
, Grilk replied.

The words from Grilk—unequivocal, assured—meant a lot. McGillivray sometimes felt trepidation seeking this permission. He was the race director, after all. Asking to leave the scene always felt like a big thing, a little part of him believing he was abandoning his troops, even though he ran with his phone in his hand. At the same time, running the course was a deeply personal obligation, one he did not intend to break. Ever since 1973, he had kept the promise to his grandfather to finish. His start time varied year to year, depending on how things were going. In 2012, he didn’t begin running until 8:30
P.M.
because the crippling heat had sent so many runners to medical tents and hospitals. That year he crossed the finish line just shy of midnight. Sometimes when he ran, people along the course, not knowing who he was, would shout words of encouragement like “
Hey, you slug, the race is over!” or “The eighty-year-old guy went by hours ago. Pick it up.” With Grilk’s reply this year, McGillivray began preparing for his cherished routine—the ride to the starting line from longtime friend Ron Kramer, the state troopers’ escort through the course, the companionship of running buddy Josh Nemzer, and McGillivray’s brother Bob shadowing them in his car, ready with water, Gatorade, and food, including a batch of chocolate chip cookies made from their mother’s recipe. The heavy responsibility having largely fallen away, McGillivray could now allow himself the privilege of worrying only about pushing his body through 26.2 miles. It would be the capstone to another successful year, another satisfying feat. “Beat it” were just the words he wanted to hear.

CHAPTER 4
FINISH LINE

Gathering on the sidelines

S
hana Cottone reported to roll call before 9:00
A
.
M
.
The spot where cops assembled, the Boston Police Department’s District 4 station in the South End, was directly behind the massive stone Cathedral of the Holy Cross. The bosses handed out assignments for the marathon: Shana was to be stationed on Boston Common, the oldest public park in America, five or six blocks beyond the finish line. After roll call, though, another officer approached her and asked if she would swap assignments so he could work the Common with a friend of his. Shana agreed without hesitating. She would gladly go to Boylston Street to patrol the finish line itself. It made no difference to her. She parked beside the library and got to work.

A rare holiday spirit swept the city on this day each year; everyone seemed to be wound a little less tightly. The party-like atmosphere could present its own headaches for police, however. Shana figured she would deserve it if a pack of drunk, obnoxious college students came her way. Not so long ago, the twenty-seven-year-old police officer had been a college kid herself. She and her Northeastern friends had not always been on their best behavior when they came to the finish line, sipping wine out of plastic cups and climbing on the chain-link fence by Lord & Taylor until the cops yelled at them to get down. Now the tables were turned; any rowdiness would be, for her, a kind of karmic payback. The street, though, remained fairly quiet at 10:00
A.M.
Most college students were probably just getting out of bed.

 • • • 

M
arathon Monday began early for Heather Abbott.
It was barely light outside when her friend Jason Geremia picked her up in Newport for the drive to Providence, where they would catch a train to Boston. Jason was like an older brother to Heather, a little bit bossy and overprotective. In the car, he talked about being single; Heather was newly single, too. “I’ll be your date anytime,” Heather told him. They were friends, nothing more, but they were close. People often mistook them for a couple; people who knew them well understood why they weren’t. It worked the way it was, and neither one wanted to change it. Sitting on the train to Boston, laughing with their friends, was like a scene out of high school. When the conductor kicked them out of the quiet car for being too noisy, it only made them laugh harder. They got to the city at 9:30, stopped for coffee, and headed to Fenway Park for the Red Sox game. The first pitch was at 11:05.

 • • • 

T
he crowds at the finish line built quickly and steadily through the morning. The marathon winners came across around noon—Lelisa Desisa of Ethiopia for the men, with a time of 2:10, and Kenya’s Rita Jeptoo for the women, in 2:26. Governor Deval Patrick crowned them with the traditional wreaths, made of olive leaves that came all the way from Greece. Typically, the governor crowns the women’s winner and the mayor crowns the men’s. But Boston mayor Thomas Menino was in the hospital, recovering from surgery two days earlier on a broken leg. With great reluctance, he had called Patrick to ask him to do the honors.
It pained Menino to miss out on a day he loved. Just two weeks earlier, he had announced he would not run for office again, after a record twenty years in power. He had never missed a marathon, and he would not get another chance to be there in his ceremonial role. The mayor’s favorite part came later, though, after all the dignitaries had departed. He often stayed for hours, watching the waves of average people cross the finish line.

 • • • 

A
round lunchtime, Shana ate a sandwich in a suite at the Lenox Hotel that was being used as a break room by police. It was fancier than her usual workday digs, with plush armchairs and complimentary shoulder massages. Then she returned to her post in the street. In front of her, a row of flags flapped gently in the breeze, their bold blocks of color representing the runners’ many countries. Police officers in bright yellow vests were lined up there with gaps between them, facing the sidewalk in front of the Marathon Sports store, a final barrier between the runners and the crowd.

The mass of spectators was like a giant hive of bees, its constant, seemingly random movements revealing more predictable patterns upon close study. College and high school students, families with children, coworkers and spouses, Bostonians and out-of-towners were all bunched up together. They remained in constant flux, bodies replacing bodies in a continuous cycle. Friends and family members tracking particular runners timed their arrival at the finish line to coincide with their loved one’s approach. They pushed their way to the front to see and cheer and photograph the magical moment of fulfillment, and then retreated, setting off to find their runner. Fresh faces flowed in to replace them. Today, the hive was peaceful. Shana couldn’t find much to worry about.

 • • • 

D
eval Patrick never had days like this. It was a state holiday, so technically he was off the clock—as much as a governor can be. Plus his wife was in New York. That left him alone for a warmish April afternoon. After greeting the marathon winners, he offered hugs and thanks to race volunteers, and then headed out around 1:00
P
.
M
.
He went to get a buzz cut at the Summer Street Barber Shop, at the edge of the Financial District. Afterward he played squash across the street at the Boston Racquet Club. Then he went to his home in Milton, a town just south of Boston, to putter in the garden, preparing it for the spring planting season. Maybe clean the fountain. A little manual labor to clear the head. “It’s slow, it’s quiet,” he said of the yard work. “You don’t have to talk to anybody.”

Around the same time, Boston Police superintendent
William Evans finished his eighteenth Boston Marathon. Evans was usually the guy in charge of the street for any big event in the city, but on Marathon Monday he was a runner first. He was thrilled at his time, 3:34; he knew being under 3:40 would qualify him for next year’s race. He saw his wife, Terry, and son Will in the grandstand waving as he came in. He grabbed some water in the recovery area and hoped for a free massage near the finish line, but the wait was longer than he wanted. He and his family went home to South Boston, and then Evans hit the nearby Boston Athletic Club, where cops usually met after the race. He sank into the whirlpool.

Boston Police commissioner
Edward Davis left the marathon for home close to 1:30. Everything was going well, and he had a conference call with the White House at 2:00—Vice President Joe Biden was marshaling support among police chiefs for a gun control bill. Before he left, Davis spoke to his lieutenants, urging them not to let their guard down. Stay vigilant, he told them.

 • • • 

A
round 2:00,
Krystle Campbell got a text message from John Colombo and Liz Jenkins, friends whom she knew from her days working at Summer Shack. They were in Arlington, buying motorcycle gear at a store across the street from Jimmy’s, the restaurant where Krystle now worked. They wanted to see if she was on duty, so they could come see her.

Krystle had the day off, though. She was downtown with her friend Karen Rand, another member of the Summer Shack crew. They had strolled through the Public Garden and were going to the marathon to watch Karen’s boyfriend, who was running. At 2:01, Krystle texted back to tell Colombo and Jenkins she wouldn’t see them in Arlington.

Miss you
, she wrote.

 • • • 

T
he Red Sox game at Fenway Park ended eight minutes after 2:00. The Sox had won 3 to 2 over Tampa Bay, a fierce rival in the American League East. They had been within a run of each other for most of the game, before the Sox took it with a walk-off double. After the final out, the capacity crowd of 37,449 flooded into the streets, many of them planning to check out the marathon in nearby Kenmore Square or several blocks away, at the finish line on Boylston Street.

Heather Abbott and her friends had split up at Fenway. Four of them had paid extra for good seats behind home plate, but Heather and Jason and Michelle had settled for less expensive tickets in right field. Their friends in front mocked their cheap seats, text messaging Jason during the game to ask him if he could even see the game. Soon enough, as the crowd started to thin, empty seats became available. Heather and her seatmates joined the group down by home plate. By the seventh inning, though, Heather and two of her girlfriends were getting cold. They went to the restroom, wandered up to the stadium gate to wait for the others, then decided to head for Game On!, a large sports pub steps from the ballpark. Before too long, Jason and the others were ready to join them, but the line outside the bar was long and slow-moving.
We’ll meet you at
Forum
, Jason texted, as he and his group started out for the bar on Boylston Street. Around 2:30, Heather texted Jason that she was on her way to Forum, too.

 • • • 

T
he brothers from Cambridge were already on Boylston. At 2:37
P
.
M
.
,
Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev were captured by a surveillance camera rounding the corner from Gloucester Street. Tamerlan led the way with his hands in his pockets, his backpack firmly strapped onto both shoulders. Dzhokhar followed a short distance behind, weaving slightly to avoid oncoming pedestrians. His pack was loosely slung over one shoulder, swinging slightly side to side with every step. They paused then, photographs taken from across the street would later show, loitering and talking for several minutes in a doorway next to Whiskey’s Steakhouse. A couple of minutes later they were in motion again, still carrying their backpacks, heading up the sidewalk toward the finish line.

 • • • 

F
irefighter Sean O’Brien was working the south side of Boylston, across the street from Forum. The crowd size had been building since 2:00, as people coming from the Red Sox game flowed onto the street. Many of them wanted to know how to get across Boylston, to the bars on the other side. “You can’t,” O’Brien told them, half joking. “Give up.” As 2:30 came and went, he considered when to go and find the captain to discuss the 4:00
P
.
M
.
shift change. He didn’t want to move down the street too soon, in case an emergency happened and he had to get back to his post. It was a pessimistic thought on a day that was going perfectly smoothly.

Across the street,
Pat Foley, another firefighter, reminded himself that he was off at 4:00. The cowbells were getting to him. Every time a runner finished, the clanging swept through the crowd. He was glad he wouldn’t have to listen to the noise much longer. About 2:45, as he passed by Fairfield Street, he sent his wife a text message, asking if she wanted him to buy her a marathon T-shirt.
Why don’t you swing by Tiffany
, she texted back, referring to the upscale jewelry store nearby. The sassy quip made Foley smile.
Details don’t pay THAT good
, he texted back. Then he started walking back toward the finish line.

Frederick Lorenz, a Boston fire lieutenant leading the city’s emergency medical team, was patrolling the finish area in a golf cart. The medics had hip pouches with all kinds of antiterrorism gear, like masks and kits to use in case of a chemical attack. They felt prepared, but they didn’t expect to need any of that stuff. After a while, as it got colder, Lorenz decided to get some hot soup at Shaw’s, a supermarket just around the corner. He parked the golf cart down the street and walked into the store.

Nearby, an army of volunteers staffed the main medical tent, a makeshift but elaborate operation just beyond the finish line; in all, some 1,400 medical volunteers were on duty throughout the marathon course. Typically, the doctors and nurses working in the tent treated conditions associated with running—things like sprains, hypothermia, heat stroke, and hyponatremia, a dangerous sodium deficiency. If anyone required more intensive care, several top-tier hospitals were only a mile or two away. The unseasonable heat at the 2012 marathon had kept the medical tent exceptionally busy, with hundreds of runners needing treatment. So far in 2013, things seemed to be much calmer. And for that everyone was thankful.

 • • • 

B
righid and Brendan Wall had miscalculated. With three young children in tow—their own, ages four and six, plus their five-year-old nephew—they had hoped to avoid a long wait at the finish line. So they postponed their arrival, riding the Swan Boats in the Public Garden, lingering over lunch, aiming to get there just before Brighid’s sister raced down the homestretch. Still, despite their efforts, they got there too soon. The children grew restless. The parents promised ice cream in exchange for patience. They were on the sidewalk outside Starbucks, next to Forum. The kids were pressed up against the barricade, next to the street, high-fiving the occasional runner who ventured near. It was her sister’s tenth time running Boston; Brighid had wanted to surprise her, so she had not told Siobhan that they were coming. Siobhan thought all of them, her own son included, were at home in Duxbury, thirty-five miles away. Brighid imagined her sister sprinting over, grabbing her son’s hand, and running with him to the finish. They would remember a moment like that forever. She checked her phone again, tracking Siobhan’s progress. By 2:40 the wait was almost over. She tried to refocus the children’s attention: The moment they had waited for all day was almost here. “Watch for her; keep your eyes open,” she told them. “Look for her red shirt—she’s coming, any minute.”

A short distance to her right, closer to Forum,
another family was waiting, too. Bill and Denise Richard had their three children with them; their son Martin, eight, and daughter, Jane, seven, were also standing up against the barricade between the sidewalk and the street. The family had been watching a few blocks away, where the runners turn onto Boylston at Hereford Street, when they decided to take a break for ice cream. Returning to the race about 2:30, they opted to move closer to the finish line. They were watching for some runners they knew from their Dorchester neighborhood. Jane and Martin stepped up onto the metal fence in front of them to get a better view.

BOOK: Long Mile Home: Boston Under Attack, the City's Courageous Recovery, and the Epic Hunt for Justice
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