Alien from Utopian Society Struggles to Solve Earth Crimes.

Detective Rain ushered Foanez into the crime scene. Detective Linda Rain wore a snappy blazer, a crumpled shirt, and stained slacks. Foanez wore a bright red robe tied over his left arm. Foanez looked human, from a far enough distance, though his fine, purple skin, shoulder-length ears, and white eyes gave him away.

“Sorry to bother you, Foanez. But this is a high-profile case, and the faster we figure it out the better. You’re one of the smartest people on your planet right?”

“Well, I try. I’ll be of whatever help I can, but—stars above! That human appears to be suffering from severe bloodloss!”

“Well, yeah, Foanez. He’s been murdered.”

“He’s what?”

Detective Rain pinched the bridge of her nose. “Someone made him dead on purpose. That’s what we need help with. Figuring out who it was.”

“Dead ON PURPOSE?!”

“I’m afraid so.”

“No wonder you need to sort it out quickly. This must be a very rare occurrence. Have all your world’s elected officials been notified?”

“Well… it’s a little more frequent than you might think. Look. Chief says you’re real bright. If you were trying to figure out who did this, where would you start?”

“I suppose I would try to discover the circumstances at the time of the accident—”

“Murder.”

Foanez frowned. “I don’t like that word… but yes.” Foanez walked around the body, eyes skimming the scene. “This human’s clothes are very fine indeed.”

“Yeah, he’s a billionaire. Real rich.”

“…Rich?”

“He owns a lot of the planet’s resources. That’s why he has nicer clothes then everyone else you’ve met.”

“And this is not a crime?”

“No. What’s next, what would you do?”

“Well, this is a large domicile. Have you asked the other residents what they can recall?”

“He lives alone.”

“Alone? This is large enough to house dozens of humans! Doesn’t anyone else want to live here?”

“Maybe, but they can’t. He owns it. And we asked the staff… the people who work for him, I mean. But they have no idea what happened. So what else you got?”

Foanez tugged on his ears. “Perhaps more cooperation is the key. The people of this city must be upset by this injustice. Why do we not ask them to help us find the truth?”

“Well, frankly, he’s not that popular. He used government funds on a stock buy-back and laid off a couple hundred people…”

Foanez waited patiently for a translation.

“He took many people’s work and resources to add to his own.”

“But you’re an officer of order! Why would you allow that to happen?!” Foanez said, his voice strained.

“It’s not a crime, Foanez. It’s one of those—” Detective Rain checked her phone. “Oh! Oh, this is good. Our IT crew recovered a deleted email. Looks like this guy fired his old landscape artist for not coming in while he was sick… which led to the landscape artist losing his health insurance. Landscape artist’s been missing the past few days. We’ll put out a bulletin to find him.”

Foanez looked helpless. “Health insurance?”

“It’s a thing you need to avoid death or horrible debt.”

“And… ‘debt’ is…?”

“Difficult to explain. Welp. Sorry to waste your time Foanez. Looks like we didn’t end up needing help on this one.”

“It’s… okay,” Foanez said. “It sounds like you really needed some good news.”