The Nightmare Blonde

She was a knockout blonde. Dressed to kill.

The face that stared back at me from the barroom mirror was mine, all right. Battered from the two-day bender that was still a blur. It was then I noticed the blonde in The Bay Front Bar, all dressed up in a fancy mauve suit, beaming at her own reflection. Until the mention of Fred Hunter wiped the smile off her face, and drove her out the door - into a long run off a short pier.

Someone had axed Fred Hunter, The Trib's resident muckraker, and his whole family. And I was suspect #1. I'm Dan Warden, newly deposed police chief of Oregon City. It was one of Fred's columns that led to my resignation in scandal. The prosecutor needed a trophy for the next election and my head was his prize.

Problem was the evidence: three blonde female hairs in a dead child's fist. The killer's hairs. All I had to do was lose the cops, find my memory and pick up the right fatal doll...