Norfolk Street in Cambridge, where the alleged bombers lived, seemed back to normal as early as Saturday morning. The only remnants of a crime scene were a few police barricades pushed against a brick wall.
Mothers walked by with babies in strollers, couples walked their dogs, and shovels lined the outside of the hardware store on Norfolk Street, open for business.
The normalcy was stunning, given that the street had been cordoned-off to residents, as the FBI, police and swat teams did their work the day before. On Saturday morning, there wasn’t even a police car nearby.
Outside of the house where the alleged bombers lived, there was a young man talking with a few straggling journalists. His name is Albrecht Ammon. He moved into the apartment on the second floor of that house two months ago.
"For the first five to 10 hours, I couldn't really cope my mind around it," Ammon said. "I couldn't imagine that I knew them, that I lived under the same roof as them. And now I just feel because they seemed like nice people, and I feel like if I would have moved in here two or three years earlier I would have been friends with them, maybe."
Ammon left the door to the building open, and I went inside. The dark stairwell was filled with debris and at the top was a boarded up apartment, which had been kicked in less than 24-hours-before.
A gap between the board and the doorframe allowed for a glimpse inside, where a pair of pink children’s boots stood out among adult shoes stacked neatly on a rack.
It looked normal. But it wasn’t.
