Night Film

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.

I accelerated around a bend. I was deep in the woods now. The foliage overhead was so dense it felt like I was inside a wool sweater: heavy, knotty, and only now and then a tiny gap where you could see through to the blue sky. The air suddenly reeked of gasoline — my car in need of a tune-up, probably — but something else, too: burning.

I accelerated past a bizarre tree, three voluptuous trunks writhed around each other in pleasure or in pain. They looked pornographic. My God, I asked myself, could it be this easy?

I only made it a few more yards.

I rounded a curve, and directly in front of me loomed a gatehouse, seemingly deserted, overrun with ivy. There was no way around it, either in the car or on foot. Beyond the wrought-iron gate, a massive military fence cut through the forest in either direction. I inched the car closer. Two surveillance cameras hung like wasps’ nests at opposite corners of the gate. I rolled down the window, staring up at one. I swore I saw the lens move, that little Cyclops eye focusing in on me.

“Any chance I could come up for a cup of coffee?”

My words sounded lame, flat, in the warm, poised afternoon.

How did he live up there? Was the property his version of Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch, Elvis’s Graceland, Walt’s Magic Kingdom? Were the rumors about his lunacy all simply part of the myth and he was no dark prince, but simply an old man who hoped to live the remainder of his life in peace and solitude?

Maybe the truth was something else entirely. Maybe Kate Miller was right; maybe she had seen Cordova in the backseat of the car in the early morning of May 28, 2003. Maybe he was critically injured from an accident up at The Peak, maybe even killed. Kate Miller, the lone witness, was manipulated to leave the scene. Astrid probably did have a cellphone and immediately called someone — a friend or one of Cordova’s children, Theo or Ashley — and in the intervening minutes, they extracted Cordova from the car and drove him away. Is Cordova alive at The Peak? Is he bedridden, unconscious, confined to a wheelchair? It would explain the series of medical deliveries received by Nelson Garcia more than a year later.

I climbed out of my car, took a photo of the gatehouse, then took off, speeding back down the driveway and out onto Country Road 112, passing

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