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

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.
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    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