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.

They are now three men on their own, finding that life doesn’t have the same sweet flavor without her in it.

They watch the laundry pile up and the beds go unmade, desperately missing the tight hugs and warm kisses she doled out for big reasons, small reasons and no reason at all.

Three months ago, someone shot and killed Janie Carver, a 46-year-old United Airlines flight attendant, just as she was finishing a routine Saturday morning jog on Warner Avenue, half a block from her house.

Today, her devastated husband and two sons spend most of their time helping coordinate more than 100 community volunteers in a vigorous grass-roots manhunt that has stunned investigators.

But the three Carver men are searching for more than a suspect.

They are seeking some method of restoring the shape and meaning of their lives.

“I think a violent death like this, it’s beyond comprehension,” Al Carver said recently, a few days after his 23rd wedding anniversary.

Police have few leads in the June 10 murder, as baffling as it was bold.

They don’t know the motive, only that the killer seemed to be stalking Janie Carver and had been seen loitering in the neighborhood many times in the days before the slaying.

“We believe it’s a stranger-stalker situation,” said Detective Kim Brown, who is heading the investigation. “That type of situation is very rare, but it does happen.”

Brown said the killer was described as a black man in his 30s or 40s, with a receding hairline and a fairly dark complexion beneath a two- or three-day beard. He wore a tweed sport coat and drove a white American-made car at least 10 years old, possibly a Plymouth Champ or a Dodge Colt.

So far, police have fielded more than 600 calls from people offering information about the man, and Brown expects hundreds more after an upcoming episode of the popular TV show “America’s Most Wanted” documents the case.

Until police find the man and discover his motive, there is nothing but uncertainty for the once-secure neighborhood, nothing but a gnawing lack of closure for the disjointed Carver trio so accustomed to being a close-knit foursome.

“It’s difficult to deal with,” Al Carver said. “It’s certainly nothing that anyone can prepare for.”

He looked off, his lip quavering.

If it weren’t for the efforts of the community volunteers, he said unsteadily, the boys and he would be lost.

In fact, the community’s unusual efforts have done more than save the Carvers from despair--they have stunned the Fountain Valley Police Department, which patrols a generally quiet city with few murders in recent years.

Homemakers, doctors, business executives, the volunteers are a varied collection of Janie Carver’s friends, co-workers and neighbors.

Some are simply heartsick strangers, or fellow joggers, compelled to help by an odd tug of kinship.

“She was so much like all of us who live in Fountain Valley,” said Jacki Gardner, the media liaison for Friends of Janie Carver. “She was a very good friend of mine, but [volunteers] I encounter who weren’t good friends of hers say: ‘It could’ve been me.’ ”

Most evenings, volunteers busily strategize on the phone or count the latest contributions to the Janie Carver reward fund--$44,000 so far. Most weekends, they meet to share information and distribute flyers--at least 35,000 to date.

Routinely, they send notices to law enforcement agencies throughout the state and nation, hang posters bearing the latest sketch of the suspect’s face, and build computer databases of contacts and clues. (One computer-literate high school volunteer recently helped put information about the Carver case on an on-line bulletin board.)

So serious are the volunteers about their work that leaders obey an intricate organizational flow chart, and recently drew up a set of common goals and mission statements.

“I’ve never seen a volunteer effort like this before,” Brown said. “I think it’s a tribute to Janie Carver. She certainly had dedicated friends and family.”

But Al Carver and his sons always knew that.

“It’s just neat how many people she touched,” said Cliff, a soft-spoken 20-year-old sophomore at Oregon State University.

Not long before her death, Janie Carver touched Cliff deeply by spending a long weekend with him at school.

Mother and son passed the time lazily--talking, sharing meals, strolling the campus.

“She didn’t go to college,” Cliff said. “So it was pretty special to see her son at college, something she never got to do.”

He thinks often about those few spring days, and recalls that his mother seemed girlish and giddy, asking in a half-kidding fashion about attending frat parties and visiting a nightclub.

He feels grateful for that final, private time with her.

But he wishes he had savored, really savored, every second.

“You take for granted how important your mom is,” he said huskily.

Then he snapped his fingers.

“And in one second it can be gone.”

When his mother was alive, 15-year-old Justin knew she was vital to the smooth operation of his life.

He just never knew how vital.

Now, seeing how difficult it is getting a ride to a friend’s house, he realizes how often she was his uncomplaining chauffeur.

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:

With Mom gone , he said, 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.

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.”