Floor 55

A tall stone-grey building standing erect , the main entrance facing south opposite only to an identical stone northbound entranced infrastructure. The lobby, a vast and empty space with nothing but a concierge’s desk facing west and an elaborate mailing tube system as well as two boring Ficus plants standing by the entrance. A narrow red carpet leading from the entrance to the concierge’s desk, to finally the staircase opposite the entrance. Slightly west to the staircase there also lies an elevator operated by password, unrestricted only to inhabitants of the floors 51 to 55. The floors in the building are organised as such: 1-35 BEIGE, 36-50 YELLOW, 51-54 PINK, 55 RED. The floors, depending on their colours, contains a specific amount of rooms, BEIGE floors have 10, YELLOW floors 8, PINK floors 4, RED floor 1. Each of the inhabitants are placed in their respected floor depending on their assigned social class colour.

The automated entrance doors open, two men clad in three-piece suits, one is grey the other in navy pinstripe, enter the lobby. The first man, following the carpet, walks to the vacant concierge’s desk, while the other diverging from the path looks around the room. After dinging the bell a few times with no answer the man leans over the counter and grabs the registry book. The pages are filled with the names of the inhabitants, their floors and rooms, and their passwords. Leafing through the book he stops on a page, pulls out his notebooks and writes something down. The other man, still looking around, walking from one side of the room to the other, not noticing anything atypical walks to his partner.

‘’You got it?’’ he asks.

‘’Yeah, I got it.’’

They both headed up the stairs, passing by the first floor, then the second, then the third before arriving on the fourth floor. There they found a long hallway with a series of five identical doors on both sides facing one another, all sharing the same distance that the first has relative to the second and the second to the third.

Both men, taking one side of the hallway each, the man in grey taking the east facing doors while the man in navy the west facing ones, they start going from door to door.

The man in grey calls his partner over while pointing to the doorbell with the name EDWARD TURNER over it.

‘’That’s him,’’ the partner says taking out his notebook ‘’Edward turner, room 43, password B-11713398’’.

Entering the password in the keypad, the door opens upwards. The man with the notebook enters while the other lingers in the hallway for a few seconds, looking around, before finally entering also.

The room was baron, pale yellow mixed with overwhelming beige. The lighting was poor with but a single cold light coming from a long thin window that followed the top of the west wall. The south wall had nothing but a desk and a shelf overflowing with trinkets and junk. On the wall opposite, a small revolving room which cycled from a kitchen to a bed, to finally a shower.

Both men start investigating the room, looking for anything that may help them in their investigation.

‘’I don’t see anything out of the ordinary, do you?’’, asks the man in grey.

‘’No, not a thing.’’

‘’Well whatever happened, he left without any clothes.’’ holding open the bedroom’s closet filled with neatly folded clothes.

The man in grey, leaving the room, walks up and down the hallway, looking at the names of all the inhabitants. He then, unexpectedly, stops in front of room 48 and knocks on the door. He knocks a second time. This time, a quiet woman’s voice can be heard over the intercom, ‘’Yes?’’.

‘’Hello ma’am, I’m detective Winchester. Do you mind if we asked you a few questions about your neighbour Edward Turner?’’

‘’I don’t know nothin’, I can’t help ya’’

‘’Still ma’am, we’d like to ask a few questions. It won’t take long.’’

The door suddenly opens and standing there an old lady looks at the man.

‘’Why were you looking at us when we entered Mr Turner’s room?’’

‘’I thought you might’a been Mr Turner finally returnin’, I haven’t seen him in a while. But then, I saw you two and was curious as to who you were.’’ The old lady goes to sit down, ‘’You don’t see men dressed such as yourself in these floors very often.’’

‘’How long has it been since you noticed Mr Turner leaving? Do you remember seeing him last?’’

‘’It… might’a been a few weeks maybe’’, she pauses recollecting her thoughts ‘’Last I saw of him… at least I think it was him… it was late at night, I couldn’t see too well but he was wearing some strange clothes, I had never seen him in those before.’’

‘’What kind of clothes?’’

Before the lady could reply, the man in navy entered the room.

‘’Hey, look at what I found.’’ handing over a red handkerchief with the initials F.D monogrammed in gold.

‘’Sorry ma’am, this is my colleague detective LeGrand.’’ he looks at the handkerchief ‘’ Ma’am do you know the name of the man who lives in the red penthouse?’’

‘’Yes, sure I do, it’s Mr Frederick Dixon. Although I’ve never seen him in person.’’

‘’Thank you for your time, ma’am.’’ He says leaving the room ‘’One last thing, what does Mr Turner look like?’’

‘’Well I suppose he’s short, dark hair, big roman nose… he also has a funny way of carrying himself and can’t go a sentence without saying ‘clearly’ or ‘obviously’’’

‘’Thank you once again ma’am. That’ll be all for now.’’

Both men, now having left the old lady, started heading back to the lobby.

‘’What should we do now, should we go see Mr Dixon?’’ asked detective LeGrand.

‘’Yes, but first, let’s see if the concierge might be of any help.’’

The lobby was still practically empty, nothing had changed, the plants were still there, the red carpet, the desk. However, there was now an incessant clacking and clicking of a mechanical keyboard coming from the desk.

The two men approached it to find the concierge bent over his keyboard typing.

‘’Excuse me, sir?’’ asked LeGrand.

‘’Yes?’’ the concierge replied in an exasperated tone still looking down at the keys.

‘’We’d like to ask you a few questions.’’

‘’Concerning?’’ finally looking up and seeing the two detectives.

‘’What could you tell us about Edward Turner?’’

‘’I haven’t seen him in a while. His mailing tube has been jammed since no one has been collecting his mail,’’ He says turning around and pointing to the tube that transports the mail to room 43, ‘’see?’’

‘’Where might he have gone?’’ Winchester asked as he steps closer to the desk.

‘’I don’t know, I’ve been busy lately’’ he says looking at LeGrand in the eyes and then Winchester ‘’There’s been management changes at the top floor. I’ve had to get acquainted with all the new workers and write their paperwork.’’

‘’Management changes? How come?’’ asks Winchester.

‘’Mr Dixon recently fired all his staff members.’’

‘’Why would he do that?’’

‘’I don’t know but it’s been hell for me.’’

‘’Is Mr Dixon home?’’

‘’Supposedly but I can’t tell for sure, he doesn’t use the main entrance. Only his private helicopter.’’ he says with a disdainful smirk. ‘’Do you have any more questions, or can I get back to work now?

‘’That’s all thank you.’’

Both men start walking diagonally from the desk to the stairs.

‘’Oh, by the way, could we have the password for the elevator to get us to the top floor?’’ Winchester asks, showing his perfect teeth.

Upon reaching the top floor, they were greeted by a man who swiftly directed them to an anteroom before leaving and closing the door after himself. The room was well decorated with sufficient overhead lighting and two doorways, one on the east wall the other on the south wall. Its size was roughly the same as that of room 43, Edward Turner’s room, however the luxurious chandelier hanging from the ceiling and the many chairs and sofa made the room look smaller.

It wasn’t before long that the man returned and stutteringly asked for the purpose of their visit as well as their names.

A short while longer, the man came back, entering from the same door he left in.

‘’Mr Dixon will see you now.’’ He said to the detectives leading them to Mr Dixons study.

The study was considerably bigger than the anteroom and was the third largest room in the building after the lobby and the living room on floor 55. Both the east and west wall had mahogany bookshelves running along from one corner to another, from floor to ceiling. Rows upon rows of books and marble bust of prolific writers and philosophers of the past.

Both detectives started walking towards the south wall where a long desk was sitting with a tall leather chair behind it. On the desk there could be found unorganised papers clumsily piled together.

The door suddenly flung open behind them and in came Mr Dixon.

‘’I don’t have all day gentlemen, I’m a very busy man obviously.’’ Mr Dixon said loudly seemingly trying to exert his dominance.

‘’Hello Mr Dixon, I’m detective LeGrand and this is my partner detective Winchester, we’re here investigating the disappearance of one of your neighbours that lives on the 4th floor, a certain Mr Edward Turner.’’

Upon hearing the name Edward Turner, Mr Dixon grew pale and then red. He hurriedly staggered to his desk where he took a seat and started looking through the papers on the desk. The detectives both noticing his distress looked at one another.

‘’Are you aware of who Mr Edward Turner is?’’

‘’Mr Turn… Turner? No, clearly, I’ve never heard of him.’’ Mr Dixon purposefully avoiding the detectives’ eyes ‘’You said he lives on the 4th floor? What business would I have on the… the 4th floor? Obviously, none.’’

‘’The reason we came to you is because we found this in Mr Turner’s room,’’ Winchester hands the red and gold handkerchief to Mr Dixon ‘’Does that handkerchief belong to you sir?’’

After seeing the handkerchief all the colour fled from Mr Dixon’s face.

‘’Cle-… obviously… I mean obv-… there must be a mistake… he must’ve stolen it!’’ Mr Dixon stutteringly said becoming increasingly angry and swallowing his words.

‘’Yes, perhaps, that is one possibility’’ Winchester said, ‘’Another theory is that you were on the 4th floor Mr Dixon, that you dropped the handkerchief there yourself.’’

‘’What? That’s preposterous. How dare you sir? You wouldn’t be accusing me of killing this Mr Turner, would you?’’

Mr Dixon becoming more and more anxious and with it, the tension in the room continued to rise as the detectives’ repeated barrage of questions hit Mr Dixon one by one before suddenly Mr Dixon dropped to his knees with his hands together and a look of fear and guilt struck across his face, feeling as though his secret had been revealed and they were toying with him.

‘’I didn’t kill Mr Turner… I am Mr Turner.’’ He cried ‘’I killed Frederick Dixon and reset his password to steal his life. I’m sorry… I’m sorry… I’m so sorry’’

Mr Turner now crying hysterically on the floor, profusely apologising.

‘’How did you do it?’’ Winchester stooping down and holding him by the collar.

‘’I hacked into his personal computer. You see it was all so easy once I had access. I simply just clicked on ‘reset your password’ and after that I went in late at night using the new password and… and… I’m so sorry…’’ Turner started sobbing again.

‘’And what?’’

‘’And then I stabbed him… and dumped him down the vent of the composting bin in my room.’’

Following his confession, Mr Turner could not utter another word. His hands and jaw were shaking uncontrollably, his nose running, tears pouring down his face, his eyes looking around frantically like a cornered beast.

‘’Mr Turner, you’re under arrest’’ exclaimed Winchester as he handcuffed Edward Turner.

They all stood up and started walking northbound through the study, then the anteroom, down the elevator before arriving in the still empty lobby with the concierge’s desk vacant once more.

Both men leave by the south facing entrance with Turner handcuffed.