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

by Helman, Scott

  • • •

  Around 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.

  • • •

  Deval 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.

  • • •

  Around 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.

  • • •

  The 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.

  • • •

  The 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.

  • • •

  Firefighter 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-t
ier 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.

  • • •

  Brighid 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.

  • • •

  Along with the families and young children, college students jammed the Boylston sidewalks. Standing near the Richards out in front of Forum, Lingzi Lu was one of them. She was twenty-three years old, a graduate student from China studying statistics at Boston University. She had just learned on Sunday that she had passed an important exam, and it had put her in a happy mood. Monday morning, over breakfast with her roommate at their Arlington apartment, Lingzi had toyed with the idea of going to the marathon. She decided that she would, after doing some work on a project; her friend Zhou Danling wanted to go, too. They had made their way to the finish line. Now they stood close to the runners bearing down on the finish, the day’s great drama unfolding an arm’s length away.

  • • •

  She wasn’t in the marathon, but Alma Bocaletti was still running. Running along the sidelines. She and six others had gone to support another friend, Natalie, who had entered the race. They’d made matching black-and-white T-shirts with the image of a sunflower. They’d drawn up posters. They’d bought a bouquet of yellow balloons, so Natalie could find them in the crowd. After seeing Natalie pass at mile seventeen, they hopped on the train to Boston hoping to see her at the end, too. Bocaletti wanted to go all the way to the finish line but was worried she wouldn’t make it before Natalie crossed. So she took off running, figuring she’d reconnect with her friends later. She dashed up to a spot in the crowd near Marathon Sports, where the flags of all the countries stood. The freckled face of a stranger turned around.

  “Who are you waiting for?” Krystle Campbell asked her with a smile.

  “I’m waiting for a friend,” Bocaletti said, explaining that Natalie had crossed the thirty-kilometer mark a little while ago. “How about you?”

  Krystle pointed to her friend Karen, standing nearby. “Her boyfriend just crossed the thirty-K, too,” she said.

  Bocaletti’s friends then caught up with her. One of them had Bocaletti’s phone. Using the tracking system, she could see now that Natalie was nearing the finish. She went back up to Krystle to show her Natalie’s location on the phone. Krystle smiled.

  “Oh, yours is coming any moment now,” she said.

  “Yes, if my calculations are correct, any moment,” Bocaletti said.

  It was about 2:45. A woman in front of both of them, who was right up against the barricade, took a phone call and walked away. That left open a prime spot in the front row, a perfect spot for viewing. Krystle had as much right to it as anyone. But she didn’t move forward. She smiled, shifted over, and let Bocaletti go up front.

  • • •

  Heather finally made it to Boylston Street. Crossing over from Fenway Park, she and her friends had gotten lost in the marathon street closures, just like last year, but they were having a good time, and the slight delay didn’t bother them. They walked up the sidewalk on the same side as Forum, approaching with the restaurant to their left. The door to the bar was open. A bouncer was checking IDs. Moving closer to the door, her friends in front of her, Heather peered into the bar. It didn’t look as crowded as she had expected. She didn’t see anyone she knew, not yet. In a minute, when they were inside, she would get a better look.

  • • •

  On his own now, Tamerlan Tsarnaev continued walking eastbound toward the finish line. Dzhokhar moved a little farther east, too, then stopped on the sidewalk in front of Forum, a few feet behind eight-year-old Martin Richard. Lingzi Lu was nearby, too. He eased his heavy backpack to the ground, letting go of the straps. A block away, close to where Krystle Campbell was standing, Tamerlan did the same. As Tamerlan waited in the crowd outside Marathon Sports, something about him—a lone man in a black baseball hat and dark sunglasses—drew the attention of Jeff Bauman, a twenty-seven-year-old who was at the race to watch his girlfriend run. The man with the backpack wasn’t cheering or clapping for the runners; he seemed out of place, Bauman thought. For an instant, the two young men locked eyes. At 2:48, Dzhokhar called Tamerlan from a prepaid cell phone. They spoke for several seconds, then hung up. Each one then started moving down the sidewalk, leaving their packs on the ground behind them, their remote detonators close at hand. Tamerlan walked away from Jeff Bauman and Krystle Campbell and the other spectators standing near Marathon Sports. Dzhokhar walked away from Jane and Martin Richard and the rest of the children perched on the metal barrier, away from Heather Abbott and the others waiting outside Forum to get in. The brothers had made their commitment; there was no going back. The time was 2:49 P.M.

  CHAPTER 5

  2:50 P.M.

  Agony on Boylston Street

  Carlos Arredondo made the sign of the cross with one hand. “God protect us,” he said. Then the man in the cowboy hat ran across the street, toward the spot where a ball of white fire had just erupted. He began tearing down the fencing in his way. He could see people in a pile on the sidewalk, some of them missing legs. Arredondo knew trauma, more than any man should. He’d lost one son to combat in Iraq in 2004; he had been so distraught when the marine detail came to tell him the news that he lit himself on fire. Seven years later, his surviving son committed suicide. In the mayhem on Boylston Street, Arredondo dropped the American flag he’d been carrying, leaned over a gravely injured young man, and asked him his name. He could feel his sons’ presence protecting him. “It’s okay,” he told the man at his feet, trying to calm him.

  • • •

  Twenty yards from the finish line, Bill Iffrig was running down the left side of the course, on pace, at age seventy-eight, to complete his third Boston Marathon. The thundering force of an explosion hit him hard, a massive wall of noise. He knew it was a bomb. His legs collapsed beneath him and he crumpled to the ground. This might be it, he thought. This will be the end of me. Lying on the pavement in his
orange tank top and black shorts, he looked up to see three police officers running at him, drawing their weapons. “Are you okay?” one of them asked.

  • • •

  Perched near the finish line with her grandchildren, Ana Victoria was eager to see her daughter, Vicma Lamarche, make it across, having traveled all the way from the Dominican Republic for the marathon. When the explosion rocked the sidelines, she frantically gave the children to Vicma’s husband and ran toward the smoke. Victoria knew that Vicma, given her pace, was unlikely to have reached the finish yet. But she didn’t care. I’m going to find my daughter, she said to herself. Quickly overwhelmed by the scene, by the blood, by the vast needs of the wounded, she felt helpless and scared. She dropped to her knees, eyes closed, mouth open, hands pressed together at her lips. Make it stop, she prayed. Please don’t let these people die.

  • • •

  Inside Marathon Sports, Shane O’Hara had just popped open a Guinness and poured it into a coffee mug. This was a workday, but it was a celebration, too, a day-long toast to the running community. There, inside the tidy storefront, O’Hara was helping a former employee try on a pair of running shoes when he felt a massive boom rattle through him. The building shook. The front window went white with smoke. O’Hara ran to the door, alarms, screaming, panic ringing in his ears. He found a dazed woman shrouded in smoke and helped her into the store. He noticed blood running down her lower leg, under her black jeans, and onto the tile. He got down and put his hand gingerly on her calf, feeling for the wound. Blood covered his fingers, its warmth reminding him of the fresh cow’s milk he used to handle on the farm where he grew up. His Adidas sales rep, standing nearby, grabbed some shorts off a rack and pressed them tight against the woman’s leg.