In an old industrial town that is now little more than abandoned factories, empty buildings, and unemployment lines, a doctor originally from India is found murdered. Because the town has to rely on attracting physicians from Asia and Africa, political pressure soon builds up on the police's investigation. Nearly everyone in town dreads the possibility that the killer is someone who retaliated against the doctor for all the jobs lost to foreign competition. Since the town has lost so much already, a reputation for murderous intolerance would destroy what's left of the community. Does that mean, as the mayor seems to suggest, that the police should charge a foreigner, maybe someone from India, even if that person is innocent? Things get even more complicated when a second investigation has to be launched into a murder that occurred 35 years earlier.