The Trials of Evan Royston
Episode One : Rico Magoravich
Part One : Evan
"Mr. Royston, you have been called to this court room by the state of Georgia on two accounts of grand theft auto, nine accounts of burglary and theft, seventeen accounts of fraud, and one account of murder in the first degree." said the Judge in a thick southern accent.
I sat there, in that smelly courtroom, looking out at the family of my beloved fiancé as they cried silently in their seat. They thought I was the one that killed her, truth is, I never killed her. They didn't seem to understand that my love for her was eternal. But they saw only, as many others only see, the darkness, the bad, the evil inside of me.
"How do you plead?" the Judge said as he looked down to where I was sitting.
"Not guilty, your honor." I said in my naturally monotone voice. No need to hide anything in this room, I was already caught. "I would never kill Claire."
I heard a scream from where Claire's parents were sitting. Her mother Janice shouted, "You liar!" I smirked, but not because I actually killed Claire. I smirked because she is the liar in all retrospect. She cheats on her husband almost every other night, Claire knew it, and so did I. Did we say anything about it? No, but since I'm supposidely under oath, I might as well tell the truth... for old time's sake.
"No, Janice, in fact you're the liar." I said. "Considering the fact you haven't told your husband there that you like to suck the cocks of all the college boys down at your country club." Her face dropped. I smiled and sat back in my chair. Naturally she defended herself, saying that I was a murderer trying to pin her daughter's death on her. Oh well, she would eventually see that she was wrong.
"Order! Order in this courtroom!" the Judge shouted as he smacked his gavel repeatedly on his podium. "Mr. Royston, you will be sent to confinement until your next court date is set. You are all dismissed."
I waited for the policeman to come and take me away from this courtroom. I looked over as I stood up and saw my lawyer looking up at me and shaking his head. I smirked and went with the officer to the holding cell. After a while I was eventually taken back to the penitentiary and placed in my cell.
My cell-mate, Donahue, asked me what happened at the trial. I told him that I pleaded not guilty and he smirked.
"Why don't you just tell them you killed her?" said Donahue.
I looked sharply at him. "I didn't kill her" I said, "And you can tell the attorney that set you up to this conversation with me to fuck off because I didn't kill her. Understand that?"
"Yeah man, but I don't understand, all the evidence points to you as the killer. If it's not you, then who is it?" Donahue asked.
"Rico Magoravich." I said with no hesitation
"The Rico Magoravich?" asked Donahue with a curious look on his face.
"That's the one" I said.
"Why the hell do you think it's him?" he asked.
"Well, when I was freshman in college, Rico was a sophomore at the same school that I went to. Although, his name wasn't Rico then, it was Maximilian, but that's another story. Anyway, he was trying to run a scam at the school that would make him a lot of money. Basically, he was going to run a site from one of the school's servers to try and create a phisher and get some information about some students. Well, he got about... sixty-five percent of the student's emails and passwords that way, and he got almost all of the staff passwords that way. But he didn't get me. It was by pure luck that I didn't fall for his phisher. I too was looking to hack passwords at the time, so I did, as all skids do from time to time, looked at the source code of the website.
I noticed something different about the source code. At the top the code looked different than the other school servers. So, I looked at where the form would be sent and saw that it was sending to some random server. So, I decided I would check out the server and I found that the server was a container of plain text files that contained user information. It was the biggest mistake he ever made, and I found it."
"Well, I don't understand a single fucking word you just said, but I get the fact that he made a mistake or some shit and you found it. But that's about it..." Donahue said.
"Yeah, well, anyway after I found the mistake" I continued "I started asking around to see if there was anyone who was good with computers, networking, hacking, you know, anything that would lead me to finding out who owned the server. Well, a friend of mine said he heard some kid was selling account information and passwords on what we called the The M@iSon Market."
"What's the Matison Market?" asked Donahue.
"It's this server where black hats - the bad guys of the hacking world - would go and sell things like pirated software, cracks for games, and personal information." I said. "Well, it turned out that Rico was selling the account information from the server that I had found. So, what I did was I downloaded all of the files that I found, saved them to my computer, and sold them for less. I stole all of his profits and did absolutely no work."
"Damn, did he find out it was you?" asked Donahue.
"Not at first, but he contacted me from the M@tiSon Market and he was extremely angry and he demanded to know how I got the files." I said "I told him about the vulnerability in his code, and how it linked to his server, and he wanted to know if I wanted to work with him. I said no, hacked his account, and we've been enemies ever since."
"So, you too were enemies back in the day because you stole his files and then refused to work with him?" asked Donahue.
"Yeah, well, we were kids back then." I said with a smirk.
"But why do you think Rico killed your girl?" Donahue asked.
"Because I ruined yet another money making scam of his." I said.
"What, was he trying to sell some stolen lemonade or some shit and you stole it and sold it for less?" Donahue asked as he laughed.
"No, but I did steal thirty-million dollars in bonds" I said.
"Fuck man, what did you do with all that money?" Donahue asked inquisitively.
"Bought a nice house for Claire and I to stay for the summer before we would move to another country." I said. Suddenly my mind raced back to that house; the large stone columns at the front, the glistening lake behind the house where we rode the yacht. Then, I thought of that horrible night when I saw her dead on the couch. The knife, the one that I used often to cut various meats was thrust through her chest. Then I remembered how I ran... ran from the home until I ended up at my old house. It was a terrible feeling, that I couldn't even stay with my own beloved, that my beloved was gone... forever.
"So, you think he killed her because you stole his money and bought a house with it?" asked Donahue.
"Yeah..." I said. "She's dead because of me."
Part Two : Joseph
I couldn't believe my eyes when I turned on the television and saw the trial for Evan Royston. They finally caught that son-of-a-bitch, and I'm glad they did too. Before I retired from the police force that little bastard led my entire department on a wild goose-chase.
The first time I had really known of Evan was back when I was in Savannah Georgia. He had just graduated from Savannah College of Art and Design and was trying to pass off some forgeries to a "not-so-wise" art dealer. The guy was pretentious, the art dealer that is, and he thought he knew everything there was about forgeries because he studied at some terrible community college somewhere down near Kansas or something and had a rich uncle that died after he graduated. Anyway Evan knew how to pick his targets, and he definitely picked the right one then. The art dealer bought five paintings that equaled out to be roughly three or four hundred thousand a piece. Now, when the guy tried to sell the paintings again, he was obviously pissed at the fact that the paintings weren't real.
That's when I came in. I had only been in the White Collar Crime Department for a few months but I knew a lot about con-men. Evan would certainly prove to be the best of them all. He had set up fake credentials and gotten himself a fake ID as well as a bank account under his fake name. He got in, sold the forgeries, cashed the check, and got out. His alias, Daniel Maverick, was history.
To be honest though, I never really thought Evan could be capable of murder. I mean sure, he would scam an elderly man out of his retirement money or steal a priceless gem if he could, but he never seemed to be the murdering type. But, I guess things can change after a few years.
I got up from my couch after I had finished watching Evan in the primary of his trial and when to my mailbox. To my surprise, there was a letter inside from someone by the name of Daniel Maverick. At the time I didn't smile, but now that I look back on that moment, it was kind of funny that he remembered his alias from the first case I was on.
