A Loss Unexplained, a Family Left to Cope : Crime: Who killed Janie Carver? And why? Her sons, husband and more than 100 volunteers search for answers.

When he comes home to an empty house each afternoon, he realizes how frequently she was good company.

Recently, Justin shyly asked Cliff's girlfriend how to put the sheets on his bed.

It was a chore he'd never needed to perform.

"You find out all the stuff she did," he said, his downcast eyes obscured by tousled hair, the same bright yellow as his mother's.

". . . And you find out she did it all for you," Cliff murmured.

The boys looked at each other, then looked quickly away.

Shortly after Janie Carver's death, Al Carver sat Cliff and Justin down for a discussion about pulling together as a team.

As Justin watched intently, Cliff suddenly interrupted and began barking orders at their father:

\o7 With Mom gone\f7 , he said, \o7 you need to be more easygoing, more patient. If we're all going to get along, you need to absorb her role and assume her peacemaking personality.\f7

It was a stunning moment, a bright flash of maturity brought on by adversity, and it made the three Carver men see at once that nothing was going to be the same.

"I was very proud of him," said Al Carver, whose large eyeglasses express his mood like the slide on a trombone--sliding down when he sounds sad, sitting high when he sounds hopeful.

It was he who got Janie interested in jogging.

It was he who decided 20 years ago that they should live in Fountain Valley.

It was he who peered from the upstairs window when he heard a police siren that quiet Saturday morning, only to discover his wife lying in a dusty flower bed.

Most days, for the sake of his sons, he can block out such thoughts.

But memories come unbidden, and they must be handled carefully, like shards of broken glass.

"Every time I go jogging," he said, "every time I go to the store, every time I leave the tract, I go across the place she was killed."

Sunday Masses are especially difficult.

Afternoons too.

And evenings.

"It's just that void that's tough," Al Carver said finally, his voice crackly from raw nerves and little rest.

Sniffling, he gazed upstairs to the bedrooms.

"When it's time to retire, to go to bed."

Slowly, his eyeglasses began to slide.

"You look over there and you just know that she won't be back."