Throughout the beginning of In Cold Blood, Capote keeps the reader captivated by continuously foreshadowing the tragedy that will inevitably occur. The killings are foreshadowed in, the description of Kenyon’s dog Teddy, “His valor had one flaw: let him glimpse a gun, as he did now… and his head dropped, his tail turned in” (13), again when Mrs. Clutter leaves the bible open to a page that reads, “Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is” (30), when Mrs. Ashida compliments Mr. Clutter, “I can’t imagine you afraid. No matter what happened, you’d talk your way out of it” (36), and in more places throughout the first part of In Cold Blood. Most readers know that the killing is going to happen before they start the book, and if they don’t it says it within the first chapter, “At the time not a soul in sleeping Holcumb heard them- four shotgun blasts that, all told, ended six human lives” (5). It then becomes a question of why Capote would continue to foreshadow if the reader already knows what is going to happen. This knowledge of the future combined with the many hints that the killings are soon to happen produces a tone of anxiety. The reader knows that the killings will happen, but not when. However this anxiety does not last long. Capote foreshadows the killings in some way in almost every chapter so the more one reads the less one expects the actually killings to happen. By making the reader forget about the killings Capote focuses ones attention on the things he find more important, the lives and thoughts of the killers and towns people of Holcumb.