If the elevator could be moved, then the elevator shafts on the eighteen floors below might not all be in the same position either. If Schiller wanted to get down to the lobby, he might have to line up all the elevator shafts like building blocks.
But leaving the nineteenth floor was simpler. He only needed to align with either the elevator shaft above or the one below. As long as he lined up with one floor, he could at least take the elevator off the nineteenth floor. If he was lucky, he might get down several more floors.
Schiller chose to align with the elevator shaft below, because most of the hotel's functional areas were on the lower floors. The upper half of the hotel tower was almost entirely guest rooms, with little worth exploring.
More importantly, aligning with the lower floors was easier, because he could eliminate many rooms using a few tricks.
As everyone knew, most water in high-rise buildings was pumped up from the lower floors. But pumps of this era had limited capacity. Generally speaking, they could not pump water directly to the thirtieth floor or higher. Even if they could reach that height, the water pressure would be poor, and the flow would be too weak for a shower.
That was why many high-rises had a booster floor somewhere in the middle, where the pumped water was pressurized again before being sent upward.
But regardless, the middle floors did not produce water. Water was transported through pipes, and pipes worked on the same principle as elevator shafts. If they were cut off somewhere in the middle, the water definitely could not get through.
In other words, if there was water in a room, it proved that the pipes below had not been cut off.