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Noah’s Nightly Newsletter – 5/20/26
Hey everyone,
Noah here with your Wednesday night Newsletter!
We start tonight with our lead story:
Wow!
He earned it!
Great moves here:
BREAKING: President Trump Signs Major Order Targeting Financial System Abuse
Love this:
This is incredible….94 years old and the Trump DOJ just sent the message that absolutely NO ONE is off limits or exempt from justice:
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Then we have this:
President Trump Gives His Thoughts On Los Angeles Mayoral Candidate Spencer Pratt
I’d really love to see these two team up even more!
It’s 24 hours later and I’m still celebrating this and so is President Trump:
WATCH: President Trump Reacts to Thomas Massie’s Defeat in Kentucky Primary
And we end with our top story:
YIKES.
Before you go, I’m so excited to bring you CHAPTER TWO of my book!
Details below in the PS section.
Your friend,
NOAH
p.s.
Ok, now time for Chapter 2 of my new book I’m writing.
And thank you EVERYONE who emailed me telling me how much you loved Chapter 1! I thought you might but you never know and I was so happy to see it was a huge hit!
For those who didn’t catch it last night, my favorite author of all time is John Sandford, especially his Lucas Davenport series.
For a long time now, I’ve always had a dream in mind of trying to write a book like his, almost a tribute to him, trying my best to write in his same style, tone, pacing and unique mix of humor and punchiness.
And I’m finally doing it!
Last night I gave you Chapter 1, which you can read here in case you missed it: READ CHAPTER ONE
Chapter 1 was the first murder scene, and we meet our killer.
Tonight in Chapter 2 we go from dark to light and we meet our hero, Logan Hollister.
I think you’re gonna love this, please enjoy!
Oh, and one more quick note, I’m just putting the final wraps on Chapter 3 which I will bring you tomorrow, and Chapter 3 is where things really start to fly. I loved Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, but Chapter 3 feels like rocket fuel. Can’t wait for you to see that one, I’ll bring you that tomorrow.
For now, enjoy Chapter 2:
👇
# Chapter Two
The matte black Tesla Model X slid to the curb on Melrose Avenue without making a sound. Two patrol cars were angled nose-in near the yellow tape, light bars still cycling, and a forensics van sat behind them with its rear doors open. The Tesla pulled in behind the van the way a shark pulls into a marina — wrong neighborhood, didn’t care.
Logan Hollister stepped out with a coffee in one hand and his phone in the other. The coffee was from a diner on Pico — a place with cracked vinyl booths and a waitress who called everyone “hon.” He’d passed four Melrose coffee shops on the way. Tall, wide through the shoulders, lean everywhere else. Dark suit. Badge clipped to his belt. He stood at the curb for a moment and took in the scene — not looking at the whole thing, looking at the parts. The spiderweb crack in the boutique’s plate glass window. The blood smear visible through it. The smashed display cases inside, glass and price tags on the floor. Two uniforms at the tape line, keeping a small crowd of early-morning Melrose joggers and yoga-mat carriers at a distance.
A bright Saturday morning on the high-end stretch of Melrose — designer boutiques on both sides, the kind of stores that buzz you in and know your name. The kind of neighborhood where the worst thing that usually happens is someone double-parks a Range Rover. But today the blood was real.
A young uniform near the tape, a face Logan didn’t recognize, gave the Tesla a look. The kind of look that does math on a cop’s salary and comes up short. Logan caught it. “You need something, Officer?” The uniform looked away. Logan didn’t.
Curt Alton was standing just inside the tape, coffee in hand, rumpled in the way a man gets when he’s been awake for fourteen hours and running on caffeine and stubbornness. He had the face of a guy who’d been decent-looking in college and now just looked like a cop who didn’t sleep enough. His tie was loosened, his sport coat wrinkled at the elbows. He’d been here all night.
“You look like hell,” Logan said, ducking under the tape.
“You look like a catalog,” Curt said. “How was the drive?”
“Left Laguna at midnight. Condo was freezing — forgot to set the thermostat from the app.”
“Tragic.” Curt was already walking. Logan fell in beside him and they moved toward the boutique entrance. Ten years they’d worked together. The last three, Logan had the money to walk anytime he wanted, and that was exactly why he never had to. Robbery-Homicide, full authority, but he lived in Laguna and picked his cases. The department kept its best detective. Logan kept the job without the leash.
“Walk me through it,” Logan said.
“Crew of three, last night, 8:45. Masks, gloves, one handgun visible — looked like a Glock to the witnesses but witnesses are witnesses. In and out in under three minutes. They knew what they wanted: handbags, watches, loose jewelry. Stuff you can carry in a duffel bag and fence before breakfast.”
They stepped through the front entrance. The boutique was small and deliberately elegant, or it had been. Display cases smashed open, glass crunching under their shoes, empty velvet trays where the merchandise used to sit. A single earring on the floor near the door. Dropped on the way out, not worth going back for. A four-thousand-dollar earring. These guys had standards. A blood smear ran along the base of a tall glass case near the register, head-height, then down to the floor, the ugly physics of someone’s face hitting glass and then hitting tile.
“The clerk,” Curt said, following Logan’s eyes. “Alyssa Medina, twenty-six. Worked here two years. She tried to reach for the silent alarm and one of the crew caught it. He grabbed her by the hair, put her face through the case, then pistol-whipped her on the floor.”
Logan looked at the blood smear. The impact point on the glass was about five feet up. The smear tracked straight down. She’d dropped like weight.
He stood there a beat too long. Curt knew the look.
“She’s at Cedars,” Curt said. “ICU. Fractured skull, swelling on the brain. They’re watching her but it doesn’t sound good.”
“Same crew as the other two?”
“Same playbook. Jewelry store on Robertson two weeks ago, boutique near the Beverly Center eight days later. First hit was clean — grab and go, nobody hurt. Second one, they roughed up the owner a little, shoved him around. This time they almost killed somebody.” Curt took a sip of his coffee. “They’re getting comfortable.”
Logan stopped walking. He was standing near the back of the store, looking at the smashed display cases. Two along the left wall. One on the right. The one on the right was untouched — still locked, still full of merchandise. Bracelets, earrings, some pieces that looked expensive even from here.
“What’s in that case?” Logan asked.
Curt looked. “Costume stuff, I think. Semi-precious. The high-end pieces were on the left wall and behind the register.”
“So they knew which cases to hit.”
Curt’s mouth moved a little. Not quite a smile. “Yeah. I was getting to that.”
“They’ve been in here before,” Logan said. “As customers. Or pretending to be. They walked around, they looked at the layout, they figured out where the real money was. That case” — he pointed to the right wall — “didn’t get touched because it wasn’t worth the thirty seconds.”
“I pulled the store’s customer log this morning. They keep one — names, phone numbers, preferences. Very high-end service. But walk-ins don’t always get logged.”
“How’d they leave?”
“Black SUV, no plates. Went east on Melrose, turned south on La Brea. We’ve got traffic camera footage from the intersection but the plates were either removed or covered. Still working it.”
“East on Melrose, south on La Brea,” Logan repeated. He was looking at the boutique’s position on the block. Mid-block, between two other stores. “And the alley?”
“Runs behind the building. Exits onto a side street.”
“Two escape routes. So they scouted the exit as well as the merchandise.” Logan turned back to the front of the store. “These guys aren’t tourists. They know the Westside. They’ve done this before or they’re planning to keep doing it.”
They stepped back outside into the morning light. After the dim wreckage of the boutique, Melrose Avenue looked almost aggressively normal — a woman walking a French bulldog, a guy on a phone outside a coffee shop, a delivery truck easing past the patrol cars. Half the crowd at the tape line had their phones out. Somebody would have it on Instagram before Logan got to his car.
“Owner’s across the street,” Curt said. “Diane Barstow. She’s been at that coffee shop since it opened. She’s on her third espresso and her second call to the mayor’s office.”
“Connected?”
“She’s got the kind of money where connected is the default setting.”
Logan crossed the street. Diane Barstow was sitting at an outdoor table with her uncased iPhone flat on the surface and her eyes locked on the boutique across the street like she was daring it to look away. Late fifties, thin, dressed in the kind of casual that costs more than most people’s formal. She looked like a woman who solved problems with a phone call and was deeply offended that this one hadn’t cooperated.
“Mrs. Barstow? I’m Logan Hollister, LAPD.”
She looked up at him — six-two, broad through the shoulders, the kind of build that filled a doorway without trying. She took in the suit, the badge, the fact that he didn’t look like the uniformed officers she’d been dealing with all night. Something in her posture shifted — not relaxed, but recalibrated.
“Alyssa is twenty-six,” she said. “She just got engaged. She’s lying in a hospital bed with her skull fractured because three animals walked into my store and—” She stopped. Pressed her lips together. “What are you going to do about it?”
“I’m going to find them,” Logan said. He said it simply, without drama, the way you’d tell someone what time it was. “Can I ask you a few questions?”
She nodded.
“In the last two or three weeks, has anyone come into the store who felt off? Someone who didn’t buy anything but spent a lot of time looking around?”
Diane Barstow’s eyes narrowed. “There was a man. Maybe ten days ago. He came in, said he was looking for a gift for his wife. Spent twenty minutes browsing but didn’t try anything on, didn’t ask prices. He was interested in the layout more than the merchandise.”
“Can you describe him?”
“Thirties. Average height. Nice jacket — Brunello Cucinelli, I think. He looked like he belonged, which is probably why I didn’t think much of it until now.” She paused. “I remember everyone who comes into my store. I didn’t recognize him.”
Logan filed it. His expression didn’t change.
“Does the store have security cameras?”
“Of course. The system records to the cloud.”
“Can you pull up the footage from ten days ago and send it to me?” Logan took out his phone and showed her the number. “Text it directly. I don’t want to wait for the evidence unit to process it.”
She looked at him — a quick, sharp assessment, the kind a businesswoman makes when she’s deciding whether someone is competent. Then she picked up her phone and started tapping.
“I’ve called the mayor’s office,” she said while she worked, and there was an edge in it — not a threat exactly, more like a weather report. This is coming. Be ready.
“I’d expect nothing less,” Logan said. He gave her a card. She set it on the table next to her espresso without looking at it.
While Logan was talking to Barstow, a plainclothes detective had walked over to the tape line and was having a conversation with one of the uniforms that involved a lot of gesturing toward the Tesla. Curt intercepted him before he got to Logan.
Logan saw it in his peripheral vision — Curt showing his badge, a brief exchange, the other detective’s body language cycling from pissed off to resigned. The guy had been working the robbery series for two weeks, grinding it out, and now Logan rolls up in a Tesla and takes it. Logan got it. He’d feel the same way. But the Deputy Chief wanted his best on it, and that was that. By the time Logan walked back across the street, it was handled.
“New friend?” Logan asked.
“Detective Morales. He’s been working these robberies since the first hit. He’ll get over it.” Curt glanced at Logan’s phone. “Did you just have a civilian send you evidence footage directly?”
“I had a victim send me security video that I’ll watch in the car in ten minutes instead of waiting two days for the evidence unit to get around to it.”
“Defense attorney’s going to love that.”
“Then log it before he gets out of bed.”
Curt shook his head, but he was almost smiling. He’d seen this before.
They walked to the Tesla. As Logan got close, the driver’s door swung open on its own, interior lights already on, the car sensing his phone in his pocket and presenting itself like a valet had been standing there the whole time. Curt watched this with the expression of a man who’d seen it a hundred times and still found it mildly ridiculous.
“Your car has better manners than most people I know,” Curt said.
“Most people you know are cops.”
“You lasted, what — three days in Laguna this time before you picked up the phone?” Curt said it lightly, the way you bust a friend’s chops.
Logan had bought the house in Laguna two years ago. Beautiful place, ocean views, the kind of quiet that was supposed to feel like peace. It never did. Three days in and the walls started closing. He’d start checking his phone, scanning the news, looking for the thing Laguna couldn’t give him. The beach house was where he lived. LA was where he was alive.
They got in. Logan pulled away from the curb heading east on Melrose, and Curt felt the seat push back. Logan always drove harder when a case was building, like the motor in the car had to keep up with the one in his head. Curt grabbed the door handle and didn’t say anything. He’d learned.
“Cedars first?” Curt asked.
“Cedars first. I want to talk to the charge nurse, find out what we’re looking at. If she wakes up, I want to be the first call.”
“And if she doesn’t?”
Logan’s hands tightened on the steering yoke. Just slightly. “Then this stops being a robbery investigation.”
They drove south on La Brea. The morning traffic was building — the particular slow-motion gridlock of Los Angeles, where everybody had somewhere to be and nobody knew how to merge. Logan let the car handle the crawl.
“How’s Laguna?” Curt asked.
“Quiet.”
“You say that like it’s a complaint.” A beat. “Sarah call?”
“Don’t.” The word came out harder than Logan probably intended. Or maybe exactly as hard as he intended. Curt let it go. He’d been partnered with Logan long enough to know where the fence was.
“Three hits in two weeks,” Logan said. “Same playbook, escalating violence, all high-end Westside. Someone’s running this crew. The guys in the masks are the muscle, but there’s a brain picking the targets.”
“Because of the casing?”
“Because of all of it. The location — mid-block, two exit routes. The timing — right before close, after the foot traffic dies down but before the safe gets locked. The case selection — they walked past sixty grand in semi-precious and went straight for the real stuff. Somebody did homework.”
Curt was quiet for a moment. “The other two scenes — Robertson and Beverly Center — I can pull the owner interviews, see if anyone remembers a walk-in who didn’t buy.”
“Do that. And pull traffic footage from a two-block radius of all three locations for the week before each hit. If the same vehicle shows up near all three, we’ve got our scout. I also want to know who leases retail space on this stretch of Melrose — anybody new in the last six months, any vacancies, any units that changed hands. If this crew is local, they might be operating out of something nearby.”
Curt stared at him. “I’ve been up since six o’clock yesterday.”
“So get another coffee.”
Curt made a note on his phone. Logan turned right on Beverly Boulevard, heading toward Cedars-Sinai. The hospital was close — just up the road, the kind of proximity that was either lucky or depressing depending on how you thought about it.
Logan’s phone buzzed in the center console. He glanced at the screen. A notification from the WLTLH app — traffic numbers, something about a trending post. He dismissed it with a flick of his thumb, but Curt caught the glance.
“What’s WLTLH?” Curt asked. “You check that thing constantly.”
“News app.”
“Never heard of it.”
“You should read more.”
They pulled into the Cedars-Sinai parking structure. Logan found a spot on the second level and the car shut off the second he opened his door.
Logan sat for a moment. Somewhere in this building, a twenty-six-year-old woman with a ring on her finger was fighting for her life because three guys wanted handbags.
Curt’s phone buzzed. He looked at it, then looked at Logan.
“Robertson jewelry store. The first hit.” He read from the screen. “Owner says she’s been thinking about it since we called yesterday. She remembers a walk-in about a week before the robbery. Man in his thirties. Didn’t buy anything. Spent a long time looking around.” Curt lowered the phone. “Sound familiar?”
Logan was already out of the car.
“Same guy,” he said. “He scouted all three. Pull everything you can on the Robertson walk-in — dates, times, anything on camera.”
He loosened his tie and started walking toward the hospital entrance. His left knee was stiff from the cold — it did that sometimes, an old gunshot wound that never healed right — but he didn’t slow down. Three robberies had just become one operation. Somewhere in the footage from three different stores was the same face, and Logan was going to find it.
He could already feel the case hooking into him — the familiar pull, the thing that made Laguna feel too quiet and the condo feel like home.
The machine was running.
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