The cold wind of Colorado Springs swept through the narrow alley, carrying with it the metallic scent of blood. It was the kind of night that made the city hold its breath a silence too thick to be natural.
John Kendada stood under the flickering lamppost, coat collar turned up, cigarette trembling between his fingers. The ember glowed weakly, like the remnants of a dying soul. He hadn't been on a crime scene in nearly a decade, yet the smell the copper tang of death was unmistakable. It dragged him back into memories he had buried deep, beneath years of whiskey and sleepless nights.
"Same pattern," said Detective Angelo, his voice cracking through the silence. "No prints, no witnesses, no motive. Just like twenty years ago."
John exhaled slowly, eyes fixed on the lifeless body before him. A woman mid-thirties, blonde, throat slit cleanly from ear to ear. The cut was too precise, too deliberate. He had seen it before.
"Red Ripper," John muttered, barely audible.
Angelo frowned. "That's impossible. Chikatilo's dead, John. You saw his body. You shot him yourself."
John didn't answer. His mind replayed that night in 1926 the rain, the screaming, the flash of lightning illuminating Andrew Chikatilo's face before he fell into the darkness. He had killed him. He was sure of it. Yet here it was the same signature, the same meticulous savagery.
He crouched beside the corpse, eyes scanning the wounds, the way the blood had pooled unnaturally beneath the body. "He always worked in threes," John said softly. "If this is his work, two more will follow."
The younger detective shifted uneasily. "You think someone's copying him?"
John crushed his cigarette beneath his heel. "Maybe. Or maybe the devil finally found a way back."
The alley suddenly felt colder. Somewhere in the distance, a church bell tolled midnight, echoing through the sleeping city like a warning.
John looked up at the pale moonlight washing over the scene. For the first time in years, the hunter felt the old fear stirring inside him.
Because deep down, he knew one thing some ghosts never stayed buried.