My heart goes out to him and his family, and I hope he turns up safe and sound. I'm interested in this case from another perspective as well: How hard would it be, in our age of increasing connectivity and decreasing privacy, to truly make someone "disappear"? Presumably, he had a cell phone on him. Were he arrested, that phone would have logged his journey to the police station or jail or ditch in the desert. I'll bet there are many people at his carrier who could check his account logs and see what tower his phone is currently connected to if it's still on, and the last one it connected to if it isn't. That information in itself could prove illuminating, independent of call logs and text messages sent.