Episode 1: The Plate Says Sixty

The Sixty-First Floor, with Ines Calder

Ines Calder counted the retainer twice, standing at the lobby desk of the Hargrove Building at five past four in the morning while the owner watched her do it. It was in a bank envelope, and it was all there. She put it inside her jacket and looked at the elevator, which had a brass plate above the buttons that said sixty floors.

“Can you make it stop?” said Pell, who owned the building with two cousins in Connecticut.

“That depends whether you want it stopped or gone,” Ines said.

“It was inspected in March,” said Pell.

The fire marshal had a certificate of occupancy in a plastic sleeve, and he read from it twice: sixty floors. The night guard, Ostrander, had ridden the elevator up at 2:14 a.m., and the car had come back down empty. At the dispatch desk his radio had been keying ever since, two short clicks and a pause, two short clicks and a pause.

Dov Abelard had taken the controller log from the building engineer and was reading it under the lobby’s one good lamp, moving a pencil down the column. Hatch Pruitt, who had flown salvage runs until one in the morning, sat on the base of the security desk with her boots crossed and her eyes shut. Leland Cho stayed by the front doors with Pell and the marshal and asked them, in turn, about their weekends.

Buttress stood on the marble in the middle of the lobby, and the bell on his leather collar rang once each time he shifted his weight. He had refused the carpeted runner by the mailboxes and the stairs to the mezzanine, and he had crossed the marble without hesitating. Ines trusted his opinion of a floor over any inspector’s she had ever paid.

“The controller logged the car at sixty-one,” Dov said, and turned the page.

“Is the goat coming?” Hatch asked, without opening her eyes.

“He goes where the floor holds,” Ines said.

The lobby car left at 4:31 with four passengers, one of them on hooves. Ines pressed sixty and held it until the light behind the button went steady. Nothing rattled and nothing slowed, and above the sixty on the panel, where the brass had been bare, a sixty-one lit up.

“I’d like it on record that I said,” Hatch began, and the doors opened.

The carpet in the hallway was the color of wet slate, and it was damp. Buttress held one hoof over it and set it back on the car floor. From the far end of the hall came two short clicks and a pause. Ines rapped twice on the door frame and stepped out, and the floor held her. Behind her the doors began to slide shut, and Hatch got a boot in the gap.

The Vote

What does Ines do next?

Vote in the LinkedIn poll, and Episode 2 gets written from whatever wins.

Follow the clicks: Ines heads straight down the hall toward the sound.

Try the nearest door: Ines opens the first door she passes and looks inside.

Hold the elevator open: Hatch and Ines try to keep the car at sixty-one so it cannot leave.

Send the goat back down: Buttress rides the car to the lobby alone while the others explore.