April 18 appeared on the calendar.

Like a ghost, redacted appeared to me on the street. She looked lost, and was reluctant to speak to me, and we exchanged only stiff hellos.

Soon, it would be two months after the Queen Street Fire of 2008, and still no cause had been announced by the fire department.

There were still many rumours in play, most of which continued to make no sense at all.

There were suggestions that redacted bore ultimate responsibility for the fire, either through direct acts, or failures to act.

There were suggestions that angry neighbours collaborated with the police to eliminate the problems associated with certain businesses and residents living in the fire zone.

There were suggestions that the fire had been set to consummate a real estate deal of some kind.

My favourite was the rat theory. In this scenario, a rodent with the word infamy written on its back, chewed through faulty wiring in the building, sufficiently to short out live wires, providing a source of ignition that resulted in the fire.

The most sinister, was a theory that supposed a disgruntled resident, with an axe to grind against redacted, started the fire whilst intoxicates with the fumes of the crack pipe. This theory worked nicely for me, because it explained the seeming irrationality of the act.

I found it difficult to see how the fire benefited anyone financially or otherwise. So if it had been deliberately set, then it must have been done by someone who was not well grounded in consensual reality when they committed the act.

As well, the possibility remained open, that a simple innocuous, accidental root cause had destroyed most of a city block in downtown Toronto on a cold, cold February morning. That would make the fire, almost routine.

But if this had been a routine fire, then a cause would have quickly been found and assigned to the event, wouldn’t it? But the smell on my coat two months later reminds me that this had been no routine fire.

And my last conversation with the lead investigator, had suggested to me that there were still questions at 14 Division, over what roles had been played by all the moving parts, in the events immediately leading up to time the fire was noticed and reported.