"Right, so...tell us what you know, kid," says Laine, making a painfully obvious attempt to be the good cop as he realizes he needs to be, "because we're definitely...not going to cause you any trouble at all. Yeah." He glances at you, apparently wondering how anyone ever manages to pull this off. The thug takes this cue to laugh at Laine's idiocy and run away. Apparently he got his bonds off while Laine was stumbling over his speech and now has enough of a headstart that you can't catch him like you meant to before. Laine looks a bit embarrassed as he realizes what's happened, but that quickly fades away. "Looks like we got ourselves a real 'whodunit' here, rookie," says Laine. "It looks like the locals aren't willing to talk, and the clues we got are damn near worthless, so we're going to have to initiate plan B...Be on the lookout for Two-Shoed Lou. He's an old confidential informant of mine who makes his home at the farm to the west. Head there and find out what he knows. If he gives you any guff, tell him that Horatio sent you."
Go find Lou and talk to him. Check for clues in the area. You can do better than this. Ask if anyone here knows someone who knows about this past that the "fiction" might be about. That might give a clue.