Andy Barber’s discovery of “A Walk in the Woods” on Jacob Barber’s iPod is a turning point in the family’s effort to defend Jacob: it offers no proof that he wrote the story, yet makes the possibility of his authorship difficult for Andy to set aside. Andy responds by arguing against the story’s evidentiary force, concealing the discovery from his family, and destroying the device he sees as both a potential source of incriminating digital records and a private portal for Jacob. The act protects and compromises at once: a father’s attempt to shield his son also removes a device that might have mattered to the defense.

Background and Search

After a long, silent pause with Derek Yoo, Andy drives home slowly, conscious that something has changed and reluctant to let the ordinary ride end. At home, he goes upstairs to Jacob’s room and finds Jacob’s iPod Touch on the bureau. Jacob had given his parents the four-digit password as a condition of keeping the device, so Andy can unlock it and open its browser.

Jacob’s bookmarks include familiar sites such as Facebook and Gmail, along with blogs about technology, video games, and music. The Cutting Room is absent. Andy finds the message board through a Google search instead. Its sparse, text-only pages contain stories of violence and cruelty; the limited browser does not reveal which stories Jacob read or how long he visited the site. It does establish that Jacob had an account there, under the screen name Job.

The Saved Story

Clicking Job’s username takes Andy to a page of the account’s favorite stories. Twelve are listed, with “A Walk in the Woods” at the top. The story is dated April 19, more than three months earlier, and its author and uploader fields are blank. The account’s saved list demonstrates that the story was associated with Job’s favorites, but does not identify who wrote it.

The story follows Jason Fears, who carries a knife into the woods. It becomes a lurid, barely disguised account of Ben Rifkin’s killing in Cold Spring Park: the park is renamed Rock River Park, Newton becomes Brooktown, and Ben is recast as a bullying character called Brent Mallis. The invented names disguise the setting without erasing the resemblance to the case.

Andy assumes Jacob may have written the story, but recognizes the limits of that assumption. Its adolescent voice and knowledge of Cold Spring Park fit what he knows of Jacob and the site; none of those features proves authorship. The most he can establish with confidence is that Jacob read the story. That distinction becomes the hinge of Andy’s response: the discovery is alarming, but it is not a confession.

Evidence and Doubt

Andy returns to the habits of his profession, trying to minimize what he has found and defend Jacob. He notes that the story contains nothing he recognizes as information unavailable to the public. It could have been assembled from newspaper reports and imagination. Even details that sound intimate or specific had appeared in news coverage, while other particulars are unwitnessed and impossible for investigators to verify. In his reasoning, the story’s apparent proximity to the murder cannot by itself establish that its writer knew facts only the killer could know.

He also tells himself that Jacob would have understood how foolish it was to write such material, guilty or not. Jacob had previously posted a Psycho image on Facebook, but Andy struggles to believe he would go further. The pressure of the case, Jacob’s confinement at home, and the approaching trial offer Andy a way to frame the story as reckless adolescent behavior rather than evidence of murder.

That defense does not silence his reaction. The story’s account of Ben’s distress stays with him, and Andy experiences the discovery as an emotional wound even as he refuses to accept doubt as a conclusion. His roles divide without resolving: the lawyer can point to the absence of proof, while the father feels the force of what the story might mean. He continues to love and believe in Jacob, but his confidence now has to contend with an image he cannot simply reason away.

Destruction of the iPod

Andy reads the story again, then clears it from the browser’s memory. He initially considers returning the iPod to Jacob’s bureau without telling Jacob or Laurie Barber what he found. His decision changes when he considers the device itself a risk. In his understanding, deleting browsing history cannot guarantee that internet activity has disappeared: records may remain on servers and on computers. He fears that the district attorney’s office could obtain the iPod and search it for evidence.

The device presents a second concern. Unlike the family computers, the small, phone-like iPod gives Jacob web access that Andy cannot supervise as readily, and Andy thinks Jacob treats it as a private space. He calls it a leak and a danger—not because the story proves Jacob’s guilt, but because the device could preserve traces and allow further unsupervised browsing. In the basement, Andy lays it glass-side up on his worktable, gets a hammer, and smashes it.

Consequences and Narrative Significance

The destruction is a decisive action, but it does not settle what the story means. Andy has found grounds for fear, not certainty; he destroys the object while preserving the distinction between suspicion and proof in his own legal argument. The choice also leaves Laurie and Jacob unaware of what he discovered, at least at this point in the episode. Instead of confronting Jacob or sharing the discovery, Andy privately removes the device he believes could put him at risk.

The scene’s tension lies in the gap between interpretation and evidence. The saved story is strongly tied to Jacob’s account, but its blank authorship fields and its dependence on publicly reported material prevent Andy from treating it as an admission. The iPod itself becomes more than a tool: once it holds a possible connection between Jacob and the murder, its ordinary usefulness gives way to its perceived danger. Andy’s hammer ends the immediate possibility of examining the device, while leaving the central question—whether Jacob wrote the story—unanswered.