It was very early morning before I got to the Weasel's house. Sandwiched between a thirty story office building and a shopping mall the house was terribly out of place; a little Victorian thing with turrets and a manicured yard. As I opened the gate (it was a white picket fence, of all things) I was under no illusions; if I hadn't been welcome, I wouldn't even have been able to see the place. 'What's he up to?' I wondered.
I walked up the path to the front door and looked for a doorbell. It had one, an ancient pull-chain affair, so I gave it a tug. Far away in the house I heard a faint "Dong. Ding-dong." and finally noticed the eerie quiet.
Something was very wrong.
I gave the door a nudge and it swung silently open. The hallway was only dimly lit and I edged my way along catiously, my back to the wall. I looked in every room I came across; sitting room, dining room, kitchen, all in perfect order. And all perfectly empty. A spiral staircase at the end of the hall brought me up to the second floor. The first room was storage, but in the last room I found him.
The Weasel was slumped against a four-poster bed; the sheets, half pulled off, twisted around his lower body. He was bleeding.
I knelt beside him. "Weasel?" I shook his shoulder, gently.
He had a long cut across his chest, over his ribs, deep enough to expose quite a bit of bone. The sheets were covered in blood but the Weasel was still alive, though unconscious, so maybe I could keep him that way.
Untangling the sheets from around him, I spared a passing thought of thanks that he didn't sleep in the nude. I tore the sheet into strips and made him a rude field bandage, keeping it as tight as possible to minimize further blood loss. Then I hefted his dead weight onto my shoulder in a fireman's carry, dumped him into my car and drove us to the ER.
A blood transfusion, a long wait, and a huge number of stitches later, the Weasel groggily opened his eyes. They had him hooked to an IV and he was wearing one of those nasty lace-up-the-back hospital gowns. He was still pretty pale but he managed to prop himself up on an elbow and grin lopsidedly at me.
"I don't suppose you're an angel...?"
"No. And this is certainly not heaven." I glanced meaningfully around.
"Oh." The Weasel saw his IV and whistled. "Morphine. Very nice." He closed his eyes and let himself fall back onto the bed.
"I have some questions for you, Mr. ...?"
"Martin Alturas."
"Mr. Alturas were you involved in any way with the recent theft of a flute?"
He looked at me with slitted eyes. "To which flute are you referring?"
"Have you stolen more than one over the past week?"
"No." The grin was back.
I sighed. People had warned me about the Weasel. "Try not to get involved with him," they had said, "He's a pain in the ass and he tends to pop up when you least expect him." But there was no helping it now.
"The Piper's flute. What do you know about it?"
"It's about this long," he held up his hands, indicating, "a beautiful white-silver color. Maybe mithril? Could be Rhinegold, I guess, since it's lasted so long. Ask the Piper. I only had it for a day."
"What happened to it?"
"I handed it off to the guy who hired me. Came home, went to sleep... Woke up here."
I knew I wouldn't get an answer but I asked the question anyway. "Who hired you?"
"Didn't ever see his face. Medium height. Damned forgettable, really." He paused a moment, as if in thought. "I hope this means you're not arresting me, officer?"
I snorted. "You know I can't arrest anyone, Weasel. You know what I am, even if you don't know who. No, I've got other things in mind for you." I stood up, stretching. Carrying a grown man down a spiral staircase and then sitting for hours in one position was doing nothing for my back or my recently relocated shoulder. "I'll be checking in on you later today. Try not to get yourself killed before then."
