Spiral

inches.”
    He played the fish carefully, drawing line in with his hand rather than using the reel. A minute or so later, Forbes lifted the snook over the stem by holding the lower lip between his thumb and forefinger. The fish was both silvery and gold, with a black racing stripe the length of its side.
    Forbes eased the fly out of the snook’s mouth and laid the fish along a tape measure embedded in the stem gunwale. ”Nineteen inches.” He smiled up at me. ”Great species. Hits like a blue and jumps like a tarpon, but sweet as a sea trout on your plate.”
    And with that, Henry Forbes pushed his prize over the side.
    I said, ”You don’t eat what you catch?”
    ”There are few enough of them around anymore, I don’t keep many for the table.” The smile turned sheepish. ”Fact is, I flycast out here mainly as a way to stay sane after a day with clients who aren’t.”
    I took the opening. ”Which brings us to David Helides?”
    ”Oh, David’s not insane, at least not by any legal definition. No”—Forbes flicked his line out for another cast— ”he’s ‘just’ a severe depressive.”
    ”Meaning exactly what?”
    The mustard-colored line rolled again toward the pilings. ”You want professional jargon or plain talk, Mr. Cuddy?”
    ”Plain talk would be nice.”
    Forbes began yanking the line toward him rhythmically, maybe six inches at a time. ”All right, plain talk. David was emotionally scarred early. You knew his mother died giving birth to him?”
    ”Yes.”
    ”Well, it can’t have been easy for him, what with a father mostly away and his brother behaving as he did.”
    ”Spiro leaving home, you mean?”
    ”Yes, but not before spilling the beans.”
    ”About what?”
    Forbes glanced at me, then restudied his line before making another roll cast. ”David’s brother is the one who told him about how their mother died.”
    Lovely. ”When was this?”
    ”David’s fourth birthday. Long before he came under my care, but I’ve read the notes and reports of the colleagues up north who treated him as both child and adolescent. Do you know much about the drugs prescribed for depression?”
    ”I’ve heard of Prozac.”
    ”Yes, I suppose everybody has. Well, to stay untechnical, there are several families of antidepressant medications. All come with side effects, though varying ones. A given drug will work idiosyncratically best for a given patient, a different medication for another.”
    ”And with David?”
    ”Zoloft is the only drug that’s proven at all effective for him. And he’s past the top of the dosage scale even for that. It does allow David to function at a very low level, but also renders him quite... ‘lethargic’ is a picturable description.”
    I thought back to Helides disappearing on me in the Skipper’s house. ”He moved pretty fast when I saw him.” Forbes jerked his head toward me like someone had set a hook in his own mouth. ”Mr. Cuddy, you weren’t to interview David until after speaking with me.”
    His voice had lost that soothing patina and grown a burr to replace it ”I haven’t, Doctor. He spotted me in a corridor shortly after I arrived at the Colonel’s house, then rabbited before I knew who it was.”
    ”Rabbited.” Forbes sighed. ”Actually, a rather telling verb, under the circumstances. David is lethargic unless frightened, which happens rather easily. Especially by any kind of change in his normal schedule.”
    ”And what is David’s normal schedule?”
    ”His mornings are hardest, as with most depressives I’ve seen. He may lie in his bed until eleven or even noontime, inert, staring at the ceiling.”
    ”Why?”
    ”Any movement is such an effort, any plan of action’ unimaginable.”
    Forbes seemed to think he should take some action himself by starting the casting routine again.
    I said, ”What happens at noon?”
    ”David drags himself from bed, makes his way to the kitchen, and has for lunch what you or I might choose for breakfast on—there we go!”
    Behind the boat, another snook, slightly bigger than the first, jumped and twisted in the air before crashing back to the surface.
    ”Twenty-two,” said Forbes. ”Maybe twenty-three.”
    I returned to him. ”So David eats breakfast for lunch. Then what?”
    ”Back to his room for a rest.”
    ”Rest? You just said—”
    ”Depressives sleep a lot.” Forbes fought this fish to the stem, before losing him on a last flipping jump. ”Damn! I wanted to measure that