“Of all the places the Eberhardts had lived, Roy's favorite was Bozeman, Montana. The snaggle-peaked mountains, the braided green rivers, the sky so blue it seemed like a painting - Roy had never imagined anywhere so beautiful.”
Moving to Florida was a big step for Roy, and it’s very clear from his first introduction that he misses his old home in Bozeman, Montana in more ways than one. He is very much the budding outdoorsman, and the mighty mountains and raging rivers of Bozeman fostered his love of nature, but Florida seems so flat and developed Roy feels like an unwelcome outsider. It isn’t until much later he learns to love and appreciate Florida as fiercely as he misses Montana.
"Ever since I was little," Mullet Fingers said, "I've been watchin' this place disappear - the piney woods, the scrub, the creeks, the glades. Even the beaches, man - they put up all these giant hotels and only goober tourists are allowed. It really sucks."
Mullet Fingers is as much a Florida boy as Roy is a Montana boy. He grew up in the everglades and the surrounding keys, growing up on the land and water and watching it disappear as developers ate it up. He’s fed up with seeing people who can’t appreciate his homeland strip it for resources and move on without a second thought. He’s confiding in Roy because, while he may not be a fellow Floridian, Roy is a fellow outdoorsman, and perhaps one of the only other people who might understand his frustrations.
“David Delinko was proud to be a policeman. His father had been a robbery detective in Cleveland, Ohio, and his older brother was a homicide detective in Fort Lauderdale - and a detective is what David Delinko fervidly wanted to be, someday.”
David Delinko is not a bad man. He’s a cop, and not a corrupt one, and really just displays the classic traits of the cop with everything to prove. The Mother Paula Case is exactly what he needs to get noticed, but Mullet fingers acts of sabotage make him frustrated, and he begins to see the case as a lot more personal. Delinko is a hungry young cop, and while he may act as an antagonist, he doesn’t necessarily wish the kids any harm. When the real villains are revealed, he joins the kids in their crusade, sticking to his conscience.
