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

by Helman, Scott

  Later Wednesday morning, Ed Davis was at FBI headquarters in Boston for a top secret briefing with Washington. Afterward, he walked upstairs to a big, open command center where dozens of federal agents were at work. In a smaller side room where some technical equipment was kept, Kevin Swindon, an FBI supervisory special agent who oversaw the collection, review, and analysis of all computer and video evidence, showed Davis the footage. As FBI officials kept playing back the images of Dzhokhar, Davis noticed something else—another suspicious man who was perhaps twenty or thirty feet away from Dzhokhar but seemed to share his gait. “It was almost like they were walking in concert,” Davis said. The Boston police commissioner took note of the second man’s sunglasses and the black hat pulled tight over his head. “I didn’t like him from the beginning.” They reeled back the video some more, Davis and federal agents crouching over one another’s shoulders to see the images on a computer screen. They had hit upon Tamerlan, too.

  Figuring out who the bombers were would be the next urgent task. But investigators now knew what their suspects looked like, and that was a huge step forward. “The day before we had no idea who did this,” Alben said. “We were all hopeful. When you were finally able to see it, it was exhilarating to know you made this kind of progress.” Alben would later say that he had been struck, in watching the videos, by how little attention marathon spectators paid to the young men in their midst. He said he wasn’t looking to place blame, but that people had to be more vigilant. “I mean, I don’t go into a movie theater without looking around to see who’s sitting next to me or who’s a couple of rows away,” he said in an interview with a Boston sports radio show. “Every time you go into a major event like this you’ve got to be on your game. You’ve got to be at least looking around and seeing what your surroundings are.”

  After Alben saw the crucial footage on Wednesday, he briefed the governor, Deval Patrick. He showed Patrick photographs of Dzhokhar taken from one of the videos, describing seeing on the tape how the nineteen-year-old had dropped his bag on Boylston Street. It was a chilling sight, but at this point, a welcome one. Alben gave his boss the good news: “We think we have a break.”

  CHAPTER 10

  PICTURE OF MALICE

  Somber morning, violent night

  The doctors and medical teams showed up in scrubs. The runners and race volunteers wore their marathon jackets. The politicians donned crisp suits, four former governors among them. Soldiers arrived in camouflage fatigues. Emergency medical technicians kept on their khaki uniforms. Police came in blue. The wounded hobbled in on crutches. Together, about two thousand people crammed into the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston’s South End for an interfaith service, hoping to hear President Obama deliver words of comfort for their rattled city. It was Thursday, three days after the attack on the marathon, the shock still fresh. The diversity of attire in the pews said something about how many people the bombing had touched, how many had been working around the clock to heal and protect. “I wish I brought a suit,” said X-ray technologist Mervyn Williams as he glanced down at his blue fleece embossed with the words BOSTON MEDICAL CENTER DEPARTMENT OF RADIOLOGY. He had been working when the bombs went off and casualties streamed into his hospital. “But I’m so proud to wear this jacket.”

  The presidential visit came as Boston remained on edge, still desperate for answers, still deeply anxious that the terrorists were at large and more violence might follow. In this state of high alert, jittery citizens did their best to open themselves to Obama’s calming message and his call for resilience. It was part of the job, this solemn presidential ritual of showing up where disaster strikes—to the hamlet on the plains flattened by a tornado, to the small town swallowed by biblical flooding, to the suburb rocked by a mass shooting. It was now Boston’s turn, sadly, and the city needed it. Obama’s objective, he explained, was simple: to tell Boston that the nation had its back. “Every one of us,” he said, “stands with you.” He recounted fondly his formative experiences in the city, first as a law student at Harvard and later, in 2004, as a young state senator from Illinois. It was here, at that year’s Democratic National Convention, that Obama had delivered his stirring address about renewing a common purpose in American politics, a speech that had put him on the political map and on the road to the White House. Nine years later, here he stood, speaking tenderly about each bombing victim who had died, visibly shaken as he spoke of young Martin Richard, recalling the blue poster the boy had made, with two red hearts, a blue peace sign, and those haunting words: “No more hurting people. Peace.”

  The president praised the spirit shown by the first responders, the spectators, and the runners who had dashed toward danger on Monday. “You’ve shown us, Boston, that in the face of evil, Americans will lift up what’s good,” he said. “In the face of cruelty, we will choose compassion. In the face of those who would visit death upon innocents, we will choose to save and to comfort and to heal. We’ll choose friendship. We’ll choose love.” He quoted Dick Hoyt, the man who for decades had pushed his disabled son in a wheelchair through the marathon course, who said, “We can’t let something like this stop us.” Obama continued, “That’s what you’ve taught us, Boston. That’s what you’ve reminded us—to push on. To persevere. To not grow weary. To not get faint. Even when it hurts. Even when our heart aches. We summon the strength that maybe we didn’t even know we had, and we carry on. We finish the race. We finish the race.” When he was done, the president wiped a tear and took a seat.

  From the moment the sanctuary fell silent, and the first notes of “Amazing Grace” rose from the choir, it had felt as though the whole town were there under the majestic stone arches of the cathedral, in person or in spirit. The ailing mayor, Tom Menino, had been discharged that morning from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where he had been recovering from surgery. Three days earlier, against his doctors’ wishes, he had checked himself out of the hospital after the bombing. He had returned there late Monday night. Now he was out for good, but still under strict orders from his doctors not to put any weight on his right leg, which he had fractured in a fall a week earlier. The mayor arrived at the cathedral in a wheelchair, and as far as his aides knew, he intended to stay in it, even when he went to the podium to speak. But at this moment, when his city needed him, Menino knew he had to stand. He told no one of his plan, except for his son Tommy, who guided his wheelchair to the front of the church. They paused there as his aides exchanged worried glances. Then with a terrible grimace, Menino pushed himself to his feet to speak. His love for Boston and its people had never been stronger, he said. “Nothing will take us down, because we take care of one another,” he vowed, his voice ragged. “Even with the smell of smoke in the air, blood on the streets, tears in our eyes, we triumphed over that hateful act on Monday afternoon.”

  Many had waited in line outside since 4:00 or 5:00 A.M. to get a ticket to the service, huddling together for warmth, a few wrapped in the thermal blankets given to marathon runners. Others held signs, American flags, and worn leather Bibles. Those who didn’t get into the sanctuary or an overflow auditorium hung around anyway, listening as the service was broadcast into the April morning. Some had been close to Monday’s explosions, some removed by blocks, others by just steps. They had heard the boom, had felt the ground rumble. They had smelled the acrid air. Now they wanted to be here, needed to be here.

  Any presidential visit demands high security; this one more than most. No one knew the bombers’ intentions, or what exactly their quarrel was. No one knew if they would consider Obama a target and attempt some further act of terror. And no one, at that moment, had any idea who they were or where they were. “The urgency and the national implications of this event were [like] nothing anyone had experienced before,” recalled Boston Police superintendent William Evans, the department’s point man on the streets. “We knew we had a terrorist incident here and national security was riding on this. The whole nation was watc
hing.” The roads surrounding the cathedral were cordoned off. Bomb-sniffing dogs patrolled the area. The threat may have been vague, but it was real. The air crackled with it.

  To the family of Krystle Campbell, that threat had already visited, leaving them with a grief that felt like too much to bear. Thursday morning, before the interfaith service, the FBI had swung by their house in Medford, picked up Billy Jr., Patty, and Krystle’s brother, Billy III, and ushered them to the church. They were led into the sacristy off the sanctuary. The president and first lady came in and offered quiet hugs and words of condolence. Their sincerity was evident. Billy Jr. could see that Obama was having a difficult time. “He was totally dumbfounded,” Billy said. As comforting as it was, the moment was hard for the Campbells, too—venturing out in public to receive the president of the United States, so soon after losing Krystle. “We did a lot of this to honor our daughter,” Billy said. “That’s what my wife kept telling me and my son—we’re not doing this for us, guys; we’re doing this because Krystle would want it.”

  • • •

  Shana Cottone filed out of the cathedral with the crowd. It had been three days since the twenty-seven-year-old police officer had been on her knees on Boylston Street, surrounded by the victims of the terrorist attack. In the time that had passed, she had scarcely stopped thinking about the blonde woman with the badly damaged leg, the woman whose hand she had gripped tightly as they waited for an ambulance. Today she was finally going to see her again.

  The minutes they had spent together at the finish line were engraved on Shana’s memory. She had known right away that she would never be the same, but she wasn’t sure how she would ever get over it if the woman from Boylston Street didn’t make it. Please don’t let her die, Shana had silently pleaded on Monday night, after she finally made it home to Hyde Park. Please don’t let it be her, she thought over and over when she heard that two people were dead, and then three. She felt connected to the woman in a way she had never felt about anyone at a crime scene. The badly injured people she had previously encountered generally ended up that way because they were up to some kind of trouble, or because they chose to stick close to troublemakers. This was different. These victims had done nothing but go to a race. Shana couldn’t bear how innocent they were, how vulnerable and unsuspecting.

  She knew the woman’s first name was Roseann. On Tuesday, she went online and typed it into Google. Right away she found what she was looking for: a fund-raising website set up by Roseann’s friends, with a smiling photo of the woman whose face she couldn’t forget. The website said that Roseann had been badly hurt, that she had lost her leg, and that her recovery would be long and difficult. But she was alive, and she was going to survive. Shana copied the link to the fund-raising website and quickly sent it to all her e-mail contacts, with a note demanding that they forward it on to their friends. Then she clicked on another link that allowed her to contact the website’s creator, a woman who had known Roseann since high school. Shana typed a message, explaining who she was. She was on her way to the cathedral for the service Thursday morning when she got a call from Roseann’s sister, asking her to come to the hospital when it was over.

  Shana was a little worried about the visit. She badly wanted to see Roseann, but she was feeling the emotional strain of the week, and she didn’t want to fall apart at the hospital. Nobody wants to see a crying cop, she thought. She had gone to see a primary care doctor on Tuesday, to check out muscle pain from her work at the scene, and returned to work on Wednesday, but she knew she needed more help, in the form of counseling. “I could lie about it,” she said, “or I could do something about it. I don’t want to be the person who doesn’t address it.” Police from different districts around the city were now taking turns directing traffic around the crime scene; Shana knew she couldn’t go back there yet, so she asked for a different assignment. She knew some of her colleagues wouldn’t understand. For many cops, there is a stigma attached to any sign of weakness. Better, they thought, to suffer in silence.

  Searching for Roseann’s room at Mass General, Shana put on her game face. She could play the tough cop; that would get her through. Her eyes scanned the room, past the worried faces of family members, until she found Roseann. She approached the bed. It was hard to get close, with all the machines and people, and impossible to really talk. But it was enough, for now. Roseann’s family hugged her and thanked her for what she had done. Shana absorbed the care Roseann was getting, the loved ones all around her, and recorded those pictures in her brain. They wouldn’t replace the others—the ones from that day in the street—but maybe they would somehow blur together, softening the jagged edges of her memory. “We will get the people who did this,” Shana told the woman in the bed and her family. “I promise you, we will get them.” It sounded like a cop cliché, but it was what she could give them, and God knows she meant it. The nightmare was still there when Shana closed her eyes; she wanted it to end more than she could say.

  • • •

  David King had been awake most of Wednesday night, preparing for the president’s visit to Mass General. When he had first received the call from the White House, asking him to send information on the victims at the hospital, he had assumed they wanted a medical briefing, a description of each person’s injuries and progress. He wasn’t surprised at that, and he could provide it. The staff member on the phone had corrected him, explaining that they needed something deeper. The president wanted to know who these people were: where they came from; what had brought them to the marathon. Listening, King realized he didn’t have the answers. He was going to have to find out, and quickly. To complicate matters, he couldn’t let the patients know exactly why he was quizzing them all of a sudden. For security reasons, he could only tell them that a mysterious “someone” might visit them—and that he needed their permission to share their personal medical profile with the mystery visitor. Some of the patients were weary of visitors. A few were suspicious. One demanded to know if King was really a doctor. Still he kept at it, room after room, hour after hour, visiting eleven of the most seriously injured and emerging with a newly detailed picture of each one. Drained by his efforts, but confident now he could complete his assignment, King wrote up the profiles and sent them to the White House. The next call came at 7:00 A.M. Thursday: He had done his job well. The president had what he needed. And now they wanted King to be Obama’s guide, introducing him to every patient.

  Obama had lunch when he got to Mass General after the interfaith service, in a private room with some of his aides, a few hospital staff, and Menino. The mayor was amazed to see the president actually eating a sandwich. Every other time they had dined together, Obama never seemed to eat a thing. After lunch, King brought him to see the patients. The bombing victims were split between two ICUs, on two different floors. The surgeon guided Obama from room to room in the first intensive care unit, giving him a few minutes alone with each patient. They stepped into an elevator when he was finished there, headed for the second ICU.

  “How do you think it went?” Obama asked King after the doors closed.

  “I think it was perfect, Mr. President,” King said. “I think you inspired them.”

  “No, no—that’s not it at all,” Obama corrected him. “They inspired me.”

  King considered what the president was saying. He thought about how little he had known about the bombing patients until he had embarked upon his mission for the White House. He had been in surgeon mode, focused for days on the work of “fixing holes,” but now he caught a glimmer of the larger picture. The surgeries were important, of course, but he had needed this reminder of the real lives inside the bodies he was mending.

  After Obama had toured both ICUs, King brought him to a nearby conference room. Rather than trying to secure the rest of the hospital, where other, less badly hurt marathon patients were scattered, officials had brought the patients here, many of them in wheelchairs, to hear from the
president and shake his hand. Having toured city hospitals earlier in the week, and now at Mass General alongside the president, the governor, Deval Patrick, was struck by how positive the survivors’ outlook was. “They were grateful for the care; they were grateful for the responsiveness,” he said. “They were grateful to be alive.”

  Obama had spent ninety minutes with patients at Mass General, staying beyond the time allotted on his schedule. When the meeting in the conference room wound down—after he had spoken individually with every patient there—the president was whisked away by his team. He was gone in an instant, it seemed to David King, as if he had vanished in a puff of smoke. The doctor was beginning to turn his attention back to his regular workday—wondering what backlog of tasks now awaited him—when he felt a mild twinge of irritation: I just spent an hour and a half introducing that guy to people, and he never even said thanks. A minute or two later, as if on cue, a lone Secret Service agent reappeared and approached him. “Are you Dr. King?” the man asked. “I have a message from the president. . . . He’s sorry he didn’t get a chance to thank you. And he really appreciates your help.”