Not so, however, the psychological wounds that would drive him to suicide two years later.

The rest of the crew and passengers were less fortunate than Salles. As their wheels locked up and derailed, the cars in which they were riding smashed into each other in a pileup that turned three of them into compacted wreckage even before they plunged off the tracks to go tumbling end-over-end into the valley hundreds of feet below. One of the coaches broke apart into several sections that were strewn across the slope to intermingle with a grisly litter of human bodies and body parts. Bursting into flame as its fuel lines ruptured and ignited, the locomotive slammed into the dining car to engulf it in an explosion that incinerated every living soul aboard.

Other than Salles, only two of the 194 people who had been riding the train survived the catastrophe--an attendant named Maria Lunes, who suffered a severed spine and was left paralyzed from the neck down, and a ten-year-old girl, Daniella Costas, whose two sisters and nanny perished in the tragedy, and was herself found miraculously unharmed, wrapped in the arms of a young Australian fashion model identified as Alyssa Harding.

According to the child's subsequent testimony, Harding had sprung from her seat two rows in front of the girl moments after the train hurtled from the track, and shielded Daniella from the collapsing roof of their car with her own body as it rolled down the hillside.

It was an act of selfless, spontaneous heroism that had eliminated any chance Harding would have had at survival.

FOURTEEN - EASTERN MAINE APRIL 22, 2001

FOURTEEN

EASTERN MAINE APRIL 22, 2001

THE OPEN FIBERGLASS SKIFF LEFT THE PIER JUST BEFORE 7:00 A.M., Ricci amidship on the bench, Dex at the stern after having started up the Mercury outboard with a couple of hard pulls. The oxygen tanks and portable compressor were in the well near his feet.

"Gonna be a honey of a day, looks like to me," he said, and yawned. His eyes were slightly puffed. "We ought to do all right, don't you think?"

Ricci was gazing out past the bow, his gear bags on the deck in front of him.

"Depends whether we get lucky," he said.

Dex worked the tiller handle, guiding the boat into the channel. A tall, rangy man in his mid-thirties with a full reddish-blond beard, he wore a navy blue watch cap over his shoulder-length hair, a plaid mackinaw, heavy dungarees, and rubber waders. He had a fair complexion that was typical of his French-Canadian bloodstock, and the parts of his face and neck not covered by the beard were chafed from repeated exposure to the biting salt air.