Chapter 1856: The Madman's Journey (Thirty-Four)

In the evening, Natasha met Stark in a secret safe house of Nick. She looked Stark up and down and said, "I didn't expect you could escape without a mecha."

"What do you think I will do? Wearing an iron suit and fighting with them? This is legal bail." Stark adjusted the position of the microscope and said, "If I don't want to go to jail, no one can arrest me. Pepper has prepared a team of lawyers. You are right. Only if I am alive can I find out the real murderer of Rod's murder."

"I wish you had thought of it earlier." Natasha crossed her arms, but she didn't lean against the wall lazily as before. Obviously, the current situation made her feel some pressure. She said, "What are you going to do next? I have an idea for the investigation. ? Is there anything I can do?"

"Rod's family doesn't want to see me, and I have no face to see them. Now I choose to fight to the end through legal means. They will definitely be disappointed in me, but the clues they provide are very crucial."

Stark stopped what he was doing, looked at Natasha seriously and said, "If you want to help, go back to your old job and find a way to ask Rod's wife and son if they saw any suspicious people that night."

Natasha frowned and said, "You should know that if there are other suspects, Pepper will never allow the police to take you away from Stark Tower, and your legal team will make them look bad right away."

"Are you doubting me?"

"If I doubted you, I wouldn't come here to see you. I and You are in danger as well. "Natasha took two steps forward, put her hands on the lab table and said close to Stark's face: "Think about how Rod died. If you died in the cafe that day, I would also be framed and imprisoned. The murderer obviously wanted to kill two birds with one stone, and we are avoiding giving him this opportunity."

"No matter what, do what you should do." Stark turned around and said with a heavy face: "Use the skills you used to get information from me and find out what happened that night?"

Natasha took a deep breath, stepped back two steps and said: "If you need anything, call Coulson, he will provide you with all the conveniences, Nick will also, and save your own life, we will see you tomorrow."

Seeing Natasha's back as she turned around neatly, Stark hesitated for a moment After that, he pursed his lips and said, "Listen, this is cooperation. Let me see your sincerity. Take back the evidence seized by the FBI's inspection department. I need them."

Natasha turned around and said, "That was handed over to the FBI by Rod's family in person. He trusted them."

"That's just because they have no one else to trust, but they trusted the wrong person. The FBI is useless at all times." Stark finally walked to the laboratory table, looked at Natasha and said, "This is my only request. If you want things to progress, you'd better do it quickly."

"Every request you make sounds like a threat, Tony. If you can learn to speak well, things would have progressed a long time ago."

After that, Natasha walked towards the door, before leaving the room. She said, "I will let Coulson try his best to coordinate, but don't expect me to steal them out. That represents the hope of Rod's family. The loss of evidence will make them crazy."

After Natasha left the room, she walked towards the car while talking on the phone. She drove back to SHIELD and told Coulson Stark's request.

Naturally, Coulson was in a dilemma. No agent in the entire SHIELD was willing to deal with the FBI. Although their scope of responsibility was above that of the FBI, the leaders of each department of the FBI were not easy to deal with. If you want to snatch something from them, you need a strong psychological quality.

In any case, Natasha decided to help Stark, because if someone could find clues of the murderer through technical means, it must be Iron Man, so she planned to drive to Rhodes's house to see if she could get more useful information from the family members.

Just as she walked out of the SHIELD building again and opened the car door and was about to get in, Coulson hurriedly chased after her and said, "The director is going to deal with the FBI himself. I'll go with you."

Natasha sat in the driver's seat without saying anything. The two drove all the way to Rhodes's house. Along the way, Natasha silently calculated the time in her heart.

According to Jane Foster, Thor's condition began to become abnormal around 4 p.m., and improved around 5:30 p.m., and according to Stark himself, he went to see Rod to reminisce about the past in the evening, close to 5 p.m., and Rod's time of death was determined by the forensic doctor to be around 3 a.m., and according to his son's testimony, Rod had already started to show abnormalities at 11:30 p.m.

It takes about two and a half hours to fly from New York to New Mexico at the fastest speed, which means that if there is only one murderer, he must have attacked Thor first and then went to find Rod, with a gap of about seven hours in between.

Excluding the preparation time, the time spent on the journey must be less than five hours, which means that the other party can only travel by plane, and it is impossible to drive on the road.

However, SHIELD found no suspicious persons in the flights between New Jersey and New Mexico during this period. The other party either had their own flight equipment or had special methods to hide from airport security.

Natasha could not weigh the two possibilities for the time being, so she told Coulson her analysis results. After thinking for a while, Coulson said: "If it is the former, the one who did it is either the military or the police. If the other party is determined to hide it, we can't find out the movement of the business jet."

"If it is the latter, maybe we can check whether the crew security personnel have been bribed, but I don't think there is much hope."

"Nick has already noticed that someone doesn't want him to form the Avengers, right?"

"Yes, and he highly doubts the FBI, so he has to deal with the boss of the inspection department himself. They have embarrassed each other more than once or twice."

Natasha put her hand on the steering wheel and sighed softly, but still turned to look at Coulson and said: "Did you bring your ID?"

Coulson stretched out He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a stack of documents, flipping through them while saying, "Which one do you want? CIA? FBI? NYPD?"

"Are there any Air Force ones?"

Colson flipped through his belongings again and finally said, "I only have a pilot's license, and it's not a military one."

Natasha took it and looked at it, saying, "That's enough. Listen carefully. I'm a retired Lieutenant Colonel Delina from the U.S. Air Force. You're my husband, Zahak from the Logistics Support Department. We've worked with Rod at different times."

"As for the details, I've heard a lot of anecdotes about him and Rod from Tony before. That's enough."

Natasha wouldn't say it because she knew Rod in another universe and knew a lot about his living habits. It was enough for her to play the role of a colleague.

Soon the car drove to Colonel Rod's house. Natasha stepped forward and rang the doorbell. Coulson acted worried because he thought there must be someone from the FBI and the military watching here, and Natasha was so famous that he was afraid that someone would rush out and stop her.

Natasha was confident in her investigation because she knew that even if the FBI and the military knew she was coming, they would definitely let her in because they knew Black Widow's abilities better than anyone else and they wanted to reap the benefits.

If nothing unexpected happened, Colonel Rhodes' house was full of surveillance cameras at the moment, and what might be worse than this was another trap set by the murderer.

Natasha turned her head slightly and lowered her voice to Coulson, "Think about the agent code. Don't touch anything after entering the house. Act according to my instructions."

The doorbell rang a few times, and Mrs. Rhodes, who looked haggard, poked her head out from the crack of the door. Seeing that it was a couple who rang the doorbell, she breathed a sigh of relief and slowly opened the door and walked out.

She cautiously did not open the door, but asked through the door: "Who are you? What do you want to see me for?"

"We are former comrades of Colonel Rhodes. I am a retired pilot and now a civil aviation captain at American Airlines. We met when we were recruits. My husband is still in service. He worked with Colonel Rhodes for a period of time when he was serving in the Air Force Combat Readiness Material Management Office."

"Oh, my God, please come in." Mrs. Rhodes hurriedly opened the door and said apologetically: "There are too many police and reporters coming recently. They all want to dig out inside information from me. I have to be careful."

"You can rest assured that we are definitely not Reporter. "Natasha sighed and said, "I won't hide it from you. Our old boss, General Burke, who has now retired to Hawaii, wants to know what's going on." Hearing the familiar name, Mrs. Rhodes' expression relaxed a little. She and the two walked into the door and said, "Is Lieutenant General Burke okay? Rod always mentioned him to me before. He was the nobleman who promoted Rod." What Mrs. Rhodes didn't say was that she knew that Rod's faction in the military belonged to Lieutenant General Burke's superiors. If someone died in her faction, they would definitely ask about it. Thinking of this, Mrs. Rhodes believed Natasha's intention a little more. "Don't worry, ma'am, we all care about you very much, and the military will definitely investigate this matter to the end, and we will too." Natasha and Coulson walked into the door, and Mrs. Rhodes closed the door. She asked the two of them to sit on the sofa. Natasha exchanged a few pleasantries as usual, and then got to the point. Because she had revealed that she was also here for the military investigation, it didn't seem abrupt to ask about the details at this moment. Unfortunately, Mrs. Rhodes's behavior was no different from what was reported in the media. She only said that Rhodes' death was too strange and she had never heard of or seen him have any heart problems before.

But what surprised Natasha was that Mrs. Rhodes didn't believe that Stark did it.

The poor lady wiped her tears and said, "I know him, I know James. He didn't befriend Tony Stark for money. They were real friends."

"Tony has been to our house several times before. When he was here, he was not as rude as reported by the outside world. He also tutored Hancock. He had no reason to kill his friend. Someone was definitely trying to sow discord."

Natasha looked at the lady in shock, but she immediately seized the opportunity to ask, "So is there a suspect?"

Everyone behind the surveillance equipment listened attentively to Mrs. Rhodes' answer.

Mrs. Rhodes was silent for a long time, but finally spoke: "Two days before James died, I heard him mention that General Ross was organizing an operation to capture Hulk because General Ross knew that someone wanted to recruit Hulk, and Hulk was his."

"My husband has been dissatisfied with this for a long time. He thinks that the military should not cause more trouble for this big guy. Someone is willing to recruit Hulk and appease him. It is to clean up their ass. Ross should not make trouble."

"He told Tony about this while drinking. He hoped that Tony could inform Hulk in advance and let Hulk hide."

Natasha continued thoughtfully: "And if Tony Stark was arrested for Rhodes' death, he would definitely not have the opportunity to inform Hulk."

"Thank you, ma'am, this is a very important clue. We will leave first."