Night Film(49)
Garcia nodded, thinking this over.
“What’s the consensus in town about the Cordovas?” I asked.
“What d’you mean?”
“What do people say about him? About the property?”
“No one likes to talk about it. Don’t know why. But they don’t. See, how it works up here is, everyone minds their own business.”
He had nothing more to add and looked ready to settle in watching Wheel of Fortune, so I thanked him for his time and left.
Page 5 of 9
Trip to Crowthorpe Falls, NY, and The Peak Estate
S. McGrath
Kate Miller
May 28, 2003
5:30 am
On May 28, 2003, at 5:30 AM, sixty-two-year-old Kate Miller was walking along deserted Old Forge Road in Bainville, New York, a small resort town a hundred miles north of Albany and forty-five minutes from Crowthorpe Falls.
It was the end of a long night. Miller worked at the front desk during the all-night “witching shift” at Forest View Motel, a vacation resort south of town. Every morning, regardless of rain or snow, six days a week, Miller hiked the two miles from the motel to Bainville’s Main Street in order to catch the Trailways bus that took her twenty miles north to Danville, where she lived with her husband and twelve-year-old grandson.
Old Forge is a narrow two-lane road that heads toward town at a steep incline. Its hairpin curves are notorious spots for car accidents—mostly local teenagers or tourists. Miller told me she was two miles from town, walking on the left side of the street, facing oncoming traffic, when a silver sports sedan careened past her in the right-hand lane.
“I thought it was a drunk driver [because] he was all over the road,” she said. “He disappeared around the bend, there was silence, then a crash, glass shattering, and a cracking noise. The horn was going off, too.”
She hurried toward the accident, though the arthritis in her knees prevented her from running. Less than a minute later she saw what had happened: Miscalculating a turn, the driver had lost control of the car and collided with a hemlock standing at an eight-foot drop off the road.
The car was severely smashed, and a blond woman in her fifties was crawling on her hands and knees up the dirt bank to the street. She was badly shaken, but didn’t appear to be injured apart from scrapes on her face and arms.
“She was crying. And shaking all over. I asked if she had her phone on her but she said she’d left it at home. I’ve never had a cellphone.
Page 6 of 9
Trip to Crowthorpe Falls, NY, and The Peak Estate
S. McGrath
Kate Miller
So I said I’d go straight into town and call an ambulance. I asked if there was anyone else with her, and she shook her head.”
Miller continued down Old Forge, but not before she stepped to the road’s edge and looked inside the car again.
“This time I noticed there was someone lying in the backseat,” she said. “A large man all in black, unconscious, covered in bandages. They were all over his arms and face. They looked bloody. But I didn’t stop to argue–she’d just been in a wreck after all and probably didn’t know what she was saying. I decided to get help as fast as I could.”
Fifty minutes elapsed between the time Miller walked the two miles, dialed 911 from a gas station, and an ambulance and police arrived at the scene. They found a woman who identified herself as Astrid Goncourt. The car, a silver 1989 Mercedes, was empty.
Goncourt admitted she’d been speeding, submitted to a Breathalyzer test, and passed. Police saw no sign anyone else had been with her in the car. She was treated at a local hospital for minor cuts and scrapes, and hours later, discharged.
The following day, the New York Daily News and Albany’s Times Union reported that Mrs. Cordova had been in a car accident driving home from a friend’s birthday party and suffered minor injuries. The fact that The Peak is an hour’s drive from Bainville (a lengthy drive to begin at 5:00 AM) failed to alert police, though it was unclear if this was Astrid’s story or simply a case of lazy reportage.
Three weeks after the accident, Miller re-contacted police. She’d read about Astrid and her famous husband in the intervening period—"I’m not into horror movies,” she explained, when I asked her why, initially, the names meant nothing to her—and she now identified the person she’d seen in the car as Stanislas Cordova.
The Bainville Police Department took her statement and showed her the door.
Miller’s claim was never investigated further.
Page 7 of 9
Trip to Crowthorpe Falls, NY, and The Peak Estate
S. McGrath
The Drive up – April 13, 2006 2:14 P.M.
Obviously, I was due to pay my own visit to The Peak.
I climbed into my car and made the left turn that was the entrance to 1014 Country Road 112—according to the GPS-accelerating down the unmarked drive.
It started out scarred with tire ruts and mud, but about six yards in, it flattened into a surprisingly meticulous gravel road. Some sort of caretaker must regularly attend the path; not a stray limb, shrub, or weed marred the way. On more than a few tree trunks, lower, offending branches had been visibly sawed off.
On my right I passed a small but conspicuous red-and-white sign: Private Drive, No Trespassing. It was a warm, unthreatening spring afternoon—overhead, sunlight drooled through the trees; the day had an idle, drowsy feel.