CHICAGO (AP) – Investigators on Sunday questioned a woman who smelled of smoke about a string of four North Side fires, including an apartment building blaze that killed three men and a woman, officials said.

The woman had not been charged with a crime, Police Department spokesman Marcel Bright said.

Police found the woman on the street late Saturday, said police spokeswoman Monique Bond.

“She had an odor of smoke, which was one of the indications that basically linked her, in addition to the witness statements and the description,” Bond said. “We felt confident we needed to bring her in and question her further.”

Witnesses had reported seeing the unkempt woman, who was wearing clear plastic bags on her feet, near the scene of three small fires that broke out late Friday and early Saturday, Edward O’Donnell, commander of the police department’s bomb and arson unit, said at a news conference Saturday.

“They saw her by the fires, standing over the fires,” O’Donnell said.

But while witness statements and other evidence allegedly linked the woman to the smaller fires, investigators don’t know yet if she was involved with the fourth fire, in which the four people died, Bond said.

The fourth blaze was reported Saturday morning within walking distance of the others.

It began in the three-story apartment building’s front stairwell and spread quickly.

Investigators were still trying to determine if the fires were connected, officials said.

“There have not been fires like this,” said Cmdr Thomas Byrne. “Especially in such a short time and with that frequency.”

A homeowner extinguished one of the fires, and the other two were extinguished by the time firefighters arrived, O’Donnell said. One small fire was started in a building stairwell, another was reported on a sidewalk and a third was located on a front porch, all likely started with newspapers and trash, O’Donnell said.

AP-ES-03-11-07 1452EDT