“I don’t know, Dr. Beck. I don’t. He—he wore a hat. Disguised his voice—spoke low. Sounded like he was a smoker or something,” she said, quickly. “I really don’t know. But—but he did give me this.”

At that, she extricated her fingers delicately from Ilse’s grasp and reached with a trembling hand into her pocket. A second later, her fingers reemerged, this time gripping a small, pink Post-it note. Samantha stared at the thing for a moment. “Right before he hit me. He gave me that.”

Ilse frowned, delicately taking the piece of paper. On it, at the top, a simple smiley face. Arranged in the same proportions as the bodies in the basement.

Ilse swallowed once, but then read the words on the paper. Run. I’m going to kill you.

That was it. Just the two sentences. Ilse reread the note, wrinkling her nose, her eyes glancing up to the smiley face again. Taunting her, no doubt. Mocking his victim. Like a cat playing with a caught mouse. The sadism alone, the desire to evoke fear, was obvious. A psychopathic, sadistic personality, then.

“You couldn’t see their face at all?” Ilse said, trying not to press too hard, but feeling her own nerves stretch and strain.

The paramedics had now reached the back of the ambulance and seemed ready to load the stretcher. Samantha was shaking her head. “I didn’t see. I don’t even know if I’d remember, Dr. Beck. I—I don’t know,” she sobbed.

“It’s okay,” Ilse replied quickly. “It’s all going to be okay. I promise you. It’s going to be fine.”

“He’s going to find me again. I know he is!”

“So you think it was the same man? Did he use that sort of sticky-note before? The smiley face… Do you remember that?”

Sam paused, shaking her head at first, but then her expression froze. She stared off into the distance, like a doe caught in headlights. She swallowed sharply all of a sudden, and began to whimper, trembling where she lay on the stretcher.

“I don’t remember,” she said, quickly.

And for a moment, Ilse felt nearly certain Sam was holding something back.

“Are you sure?” she said, gently. “Anything you say can help us find him. There’s an FBI agent here. They’re really good at catching bad guys. The smiley face. Do you know what it means?”

Again, a wide-eyed look of panic, of desperate recollection, but then a tightening of the lips, a vacant, distant gaze and a quick shake of her head.

Ilse dropped it.

Besides, she wasn’t sure she wanted her client’s killer to have returned.

Purely for selfish reasons. If Samantha’s old tormentor had found her again, what was stopping Ilse’s from finding her?

She shivered. A flash of a memory: two mismatched eyes staring in a dark basement. The snap of a bird’s wings. The crunch of her finger. A yelp of pain. Sleeping with a lump nestled against her chin. Warm at the start of the night, but cold as it stretched to morning.