Randy's apartment was in the slum district and Roman had trouble finding it. It was raining, the visibility poor and he was about to give up when he spotted the infrared glow high in a turret above the street. He walked up to the apartment and sat down once he was in. Randy headed over to the desk and got out a photo.
"You see anything unusual?" Randy asked him.
"No." Roman replied looking at the photo of Alexia, their first nanny, from Lucien's birthday party.
"Look here, here. Look see?" Randy pointed the vague haze that hung around her neck and head. "There. I didn't think much of it either at first. I thought it was just bad film but then it happened again. Here you see?"
Randy showed him a picture of the priest. "Our friend Father Barrett. Look at this here." Randy pointed out the hazy appendage that seemed to hang over the priest's head. "And here's one I snapped ten days later."
He shuffled to another photo and put it under a light and showed it to Roman. "It's a little more pronounced this time. If you envision the size of his face, you can see it's just about making contact with his head. In the ten days between the first picture and this one, it moved down. Whatever it is, it comes closer."
"Same thing." Roman replied.
"Yeah." Randy said getting a newspaper. He placed it on the table. "The rest of course is history."
Roman didn't quite understand and he was stunned. He looked at Randy.
"I know. I didn't get it either. Which is why I started digging." Randy got out some papers. "The coroner's report said that Barrett was riddled with cancer. He was high on morphine most of the time. He was injecting himself two or three times a day."
"He knew he was dying." Roman replied.
"Apparently."
"He said he wanted to be forgiven by Christ." Roman said softly.
"No atheists in foxholes." Randy replied getting some more photos. "Here we go. Now externally. His body was completely normal. Apart from one small item here. On the inside of the left thigh. Here"
"What is it?"
"It's three sixes. Six hundred and sixty-six."
"A tattoo."
"No. the biopsy showed that that was a birthmark. Come with me. The best is yet to come."
They quickly made their way to an underground apartment. When they walked in, Roman saw pages from the Bible all over the room including the windows.
"He lived here." Roman replied.
"Yes, if you can call it living. These are all pages from bible, thousands of them. Every inch of wall space is covered." Randy saw Roman pick up a crucifix. "Yes and crucifixes.. Hundreds of crucifixes. I would say he was trying to keep something out, wouldn't you?"
"He was obviously out of his mind."
Randy looked at Roman. "Was he?" Randy took out a book from his bag. "The first thing I found was his diary. It wasn't' so much about him as it was about you. And it's a little obsessive. Notes on whenever you left the house, where you went, which restaurants you ate at, what your speaking engagements were."
"Let me see that please." Roman motioned for the book.
Randy handed the book to Roman. "You'll see that the last entry says that you were scheduled to meet him at bishop's park the same day he died." He got something else out of his bag. "However, the really interesting items are here. If we're ever going to get to the bottom of this, this is it. The first is a clipping from some astrology magazine a report of an unusual phenomenon. It's a comet that took the shape of a glowing star. Much like the star of Bethlehem 2000 years go. Only this one happened a little closer to home on the European continent. Just five years ago. June the 6th to be exact. I assume that date rings a bell."
"Yes." Roman said softly.
"Yeah. Then you'll recognize the second clipping." Randy handed Roman the paper. "A birth announcement from a newspaper in Rome. Again five years ago sixth day, sixth month."
Roman's hands were trembling now; the papers fluttering.
"Was your son born at 6am?"
"My son's dead." Roman whispered. "I don't know whose son I'm raising."
"Well if you don't mind, Mr. Reigns." Randy said quietly. "I'd like to try and help you find that out."
"No. it's my problem." Roman said getting up.
"No, no, no, no please please. You're wrong." Randy got up and took out a photo. "You see it's also my problem. See when I first came into the room with the police. I took a number of photographs and I happened to catch a reflection of myself in this mirror here. Take a look."
Roman's eyes moved to the photo, his face registering in shock.
"That's rather an unusual effect, isn't' it?" Randy replied.
He swung the bare bulb closer to Roman so he could see more clearly. There, in the photograph of Barrett's room, was a small mirror in far the corner, reflecting Randy with the camera poised in the front of his face. There was nothing unusual about a photographer catching his own reflection in a mirror but in this case, there was something missing. It was Randy's neck, the head separated by a blemish of haze from his body.
"All right. Let's go. Get your stuff." Roman motioned for him. They headed out of the priest's apartment quickly.