Cliff was shocked that he’d somehow managed to kill the python with only a gardening spade. But then again, the huge snake had clearly just eaten a massive meal and had been fairly sluggish.
Cliff had been able to flank its head and drive the point of the spade into its thick neck with incredible ease and speed that shocked even him. It was at that point, as the snake’s muscles still contracted and slithered, despite it being clearly dead, that he noticed the large lumps in the snake’s body right in the vicinity of black X’s painted on its back.
Cliff supposed that the “treasure” was inside of the snake.
It was fairly difficult to cut through the snake’s flesh with any precision using only the gardening spade, especially since it kept moving, but his years of training in the kitchen helped immensely.
After about twenty minutes, Cliff finally managed to wrestle free the lumps from inside the snake. It had all been fairly grotesque, but when a human’s own life is on the line, it’s somewhat surprising the extents to which some individuals can rise.
Cliff should have been able to guess what the lumps would be before he even cut into the snake. It was Gary’s handless arms and feetless legs detached from his bare torso. This time, Cliff’s experience in the kitchen butchering animals did him no good as he leaned over and puked into the tropical brush beside him.
Eventually, he was able to look at Gary’s torso and notice another map of the island tattooed on his chest. This time the X on the map was clearly marked somewhere on the beach. It was sometime past four P.M. now, and it had to be nearly 90 degrees with the sun blazing down so fiercely. Cliff thought he could smell the snake’s flesh slowly cooking.
But even still, he forced himself to his feet. Sweat soaked his shirt but he didn’t care. He was near the end now and he intended to see this through. Cliff stumbled on toward the beach, thrashing his way through the bushes, walking as the crow flies rather than backtracking to the resort trails.
By the time he got to the beach, he felt better somehow in spite of the vigorous march through the island’s dense plant growth. And it didn’t take long for him to notice the two sticks lying in the sand, forming an X.
He fell to his knees and began digging in the white sand with the gardening spade. He dug frantically, eventually getting to a harder, almost claylike soil. The spade cut through it with ease and he continued to dig. He worked for twenty minutes, the sun burning his already reddening neck to blisters. Who said that African Americans can’t burn? he thought to himself with a grin. But still he dug on, until he had a hole almost a foot wide and two feet deep.
Cliff was about to give up when his spade finally hit something firm and plastic. He dug out a ream of paper wrapped in several layers of thick plastic. After cutting through the material, he noticed that it was an old newspaper dated from four years ago.
The headline on the front page read:
Young Billionaire: 18-Year-Old Oil Tycoon Heiress Inherits Billions and Several Caribbean Islands after Parents’ Tragic Death
The photo was grainy and old, but there was no mistaking that it was Whitney.
Whitney Nielson was the killer.